In 1866 a group of women from the Kensington Society organised a petition that demanded that women should have the same political rights as men. The women took their petition to Henry Fawcett and John Stuart Mill, two MPs who supported universal suffrage. Mill added an amendment to the Reform Act that would give women the same political rights as men. The amendment was defeated by 196 votes to 73.
Members of the Kensington Society were very disappointed when they heard the news and they decided to form the London Society for Women's Suffrage. The following year, Millicent Fawcett joined the group. Although only a moderate public speaker, she was a superb organizer and soon became the leader of the London suffragists. Similar Women's Suffrage groups were formed all over Britain. One of the most important of these was in Manchester, where Lydia Becker emerged as a significant figure in the movement.
In 1887 seventeen of these individual groups joined together to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Lydia Becker was elected as president. Three years later, when Becker died, Millicent Fawcett became the new leader of the organisation.
The NUWSS held public meetings, organised petitions, wrote letters to politicians, published newspapers and distributed free literature. Millicent Fawcett believed that it was important that the NUWSS campaigned for a wide variety of causes. This included helping Josephine Butler in her campaign against the white slave traffic. The NUWSS also gave support to Clementina Black and her attempts to persuade the government to help protect low paid women workers.
In 1903 a group of former members of the NUWSS in Manchester left to form a new organisation, the Women's Social and Political Union. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, this new organisation pointed out that it was no longer willing to restrict itself to the constitutional methods favoured by the NUWSS.
Millicent Fawcett, like other members of the NUWSS, feared that the militant actions of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) would alienate potential supporters of women's suffrage. However, Fawcett and other leaders of the NUWSS admired the courage of the suffragettes and at first were unwilling to criticize members of the WSPU.
The Liberal Party won the 1905 General Election. The NUWSS believed that women would now be granted equal rights with men. However, this did not happen and although Millicent Fawcett had always been a Liberal, she became increasing angry at the party's unwillingness to give full support to women's suffrage. Herbert Asquith became Prime Minister in 1908. Unlike other leading members of the Liberal Party, Asquith was a strong opponent of votes for women. In 1912 Fawcett and the NUWSS took the decision to support Labour Party candidates in parliamentary elections.
Even at its peak in 1914, the WSPU only had about 2,000 members. The NUWSS was a much larger organisation and in 1914 had 500 local branches and over 100,000 members.
Two days after the British government declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914, Millicent Fawcett declared that it was suspending all political activity until the conflict was over. Although the NUWSS supported the war effort, it did not follow the WSPU strategy of becoming involved in persuading young men to join the armed forces.
On the resignation of Millicent Fawcett in 1919, Rathbone became president of the NUWSS. Later that year she persuaded the organization to accept a six point reform programme. (1) Equal pay for equal work, involving an open field for women in industry and the professions. (2) An equal standard of sex morals as between men and women, involving a reform of the existing divorce law which condoned adultery by the husband, as well as reform of the laws dealing with solicitation and prostitution. (3) The introduction of legislation to provide pensions for civilian widows with dependent children. (4) The equalization of the franchise and the return to Parliament of women candidates pledged to the equality programme. (5) The legal recognition of mothers as equal guardians with fathers of their children. (6) The opening of the legal profession and the magistracy to women.
Women's Suffrage meeting, Punch Magazine (1911)
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(1) In 1900 Selina Cooper and the North of England Women's Suffrage Society organised a petition that was only signed by women working in the Lancashire cotton mills. Over 29,000 women signed the following petition that was handed to Parliament on 18th March 1901.
(a) That in the opinion of your petitioners the continued denial of the franchise to women is unjust and inexpedient. (b) In the home, their position is lowered by such an exclusion from the responsibilities of national life. (c) In the factory, their unrepresented condition places the regulation of their work in the hands of men who are often their rivals as well as their fellow workers.
(2) On June 1908, the NUWSS and the WSPU organised massive demonstrations in London in favour of women's suffrage. Elizabeth Robins described the event in her book Way Stations.
On June 21st an impressive historical and symbolical pageant, organised by the National Union of Suffrage Societies, marched through crowded, cheering streets from the Embankment to the Albert Hall. Under the chairmanship of the President, Mrs. Fawcett, a mass meeting was held of such size and enthusiasm as men of long political experience declared had seldom being equalled… A week later came the monster demonstration in Hyde Park, under the auspices of the Women' Social and Political Union. The Times said of it: "Its organisers had counted on an audience of 250,000. The expectation was certainly fulfilled, and probably it was doubled, and it would be difficult to contradict anyone who asserted that it was trebled… The Daily Chronicle said: "Never, on the admission of the most experienced observers, has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness an outlay of political force."
(3) In her book Women's Suffrage published in 1911, Millicent Garrett Fawcett compared the tactics of the NUWSS and the WSPU.
The NUWSS and the WSPU between 1905 and 1911 adopted different election policie. The WSPU cry in every election was "Keep the Liberal out," not, as they asserted, from party motives, but because the Government of the day, and the Government alone, had the power to pass a Suffrage Bill; and as long as any government declined to take up suffrage they would have to encounter all the opposition which the militants could command. The NUWSS adopted a different election policy - that of obtaining declarations of opinion from all candidates at each election and supporting the man, independent of party, who gave the most satisfactory assurances of support.
(4) Millicent Fawcett disapproved of militant tactics but was also sympathetic to why members of the WSPU took this action. She explained her views in her book What I Remember published in 1924.
After 1903 the whole country, indeed we might almost say the whole world, rang with the doings of the Suffragettes, as the violent Suffragists came to be called. I would point out, however, that for at least two years of their activity, 1906-1908, while the suffered extraordinary acts of physical violence, they used none, and all through, from beginning to end of their campaign, they took no life, and shed no blood, either of man or beast.
(5) In 1919 Eleanor Rathbone played an important role in developing the six major demands of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
1. Equal pay for equal work, involving an open field for women in industry and the professions.
2. An equal standard of sex morals as between men and women, involving a reform of the existing divorce law which condoned adultery by the husband, as well as reform of the laws dealing with solicitation and prostitution.
3. The introduction of legislation to provide pensions for civilian widows with dependent children.
4. The equalization of the franchise and the return to Parliament of women candidates pledged to the equality programme.
5. The legal recognition of mothers as equal guardians with fathers of their children.
6. The opening of the legal profession and the magistracy to women.
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