Women's Suffrage

NUWSS

• recreated national body for women's suffrage (after Lydia Becker's earlier attempts)
• Suffragists
• meetings, petitions, appeals
• mostly middle class, educated women
• proving women were responsible, capable of politics
• peaceful protest - non-violent, working within the system (legal)
• "law-abiding"
• 'Votes For Women' newspaper (closed in 1914)
  

Millicent Fawcett

• sister of female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
• married to Henry Fawcett, Liberal MP (connections with Lloyd George)
• organiser, 'string-puller', using her connections

Achievements

• 1907 - became an official organisation with a new constitution and elections of its own
• Private Bills introduced in Parliament for Women's Suffrage (1897, 1908)
• Majority of MPs in favour
• Support for rallies, speeches, marches (50,000 came to Hyde Park Rally; between 1866-1903, held 1400 public meetings)
• Advances in education (equal qualifications for girls in secondary school, 2 colleges for women est. at Cambridge & Oxford)
• Unified, national movement - although some inner divides/conflicts
• Political influence & lobbying committee (to pressurise MPs)
• Local council elections - put forward their own candidates
  • Loopholes meant some women could vote/be elected in local government

Limitations

• Social conflict/class divisions, despite attempts to recruit working class women
• Local groups still independent parts of NUWSS - with their own policies/opinions
• Slow progress
• Politicians' support, but no legislation.
• Headlines being dominated (by 1907) by foreign affairs - not enough attention on women!

WSPU

• "Deeds not words!"
• Suffragettes
  
• Frustrated with slow progress & suffragists' polite campaigns
• Strong membership - based in the North, working class
• Also important, welathy figures (Constance Lytton, friend of the royal family)
• Militancy - eventually smashing windows, burning buildings, attacking MPs' homes, burning 'Votes for Women' into golf courses with…