Separate Spheres

The Opposition to Women's Suffrage in Britain

Brian Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136248030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Sozialgeschichte

The British feminist movement has often been studied, but so far nobody has written about its opponents. Dr Harrison argues that British feminism cannot be understood without appreciating the strength and even the contemporary plausibility of 'the Antis', as the opponents of women's suffrage were called.

In a fully documented approach which combines political with social history, he unravels the complex politics, medical, diplomatic and social components of the anti-suffrage mind, and clarifies the Antis' central commitment to the idea of separate but complementary spheres for the two sexes.

Dr Harrison then analyses the history of organised anti-suffragism between 1908 and 1918, and argues that anti-suffragism is important for shedding light on the Edwardian feminists. The Antis also introduce us to important Victorian and Edwardian attitudes which are often forgotten and which differ markedly from the attitudes to women which are now familiar; on the other hand, his concluding chapter – which surveys the period from 1918 to 1978 – claims that many of these attitudes, though less frequently voiced in public, still influence present-day conduct. His book, published originally in 1978, therefore makes an important contribution towards the history of the British women's movement and towards understanding Britain in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries.

1

APOLOGIA

At a suffragette entertainment in Holloway Prison in 1912, a suffragette prisoner put a button in her eye and posed as the monocled antisuffrage leader, Lord Cromer, making a speech.¹ She was carrying forward the tradition well established within the British women's movement of ridiculing its opponents. The non-militant suffragist leader Mrs Fawcett was as keen on such an approach as any militant: ‘the Antis offer a splendid field for chaff,’ she wrote privately to Lady Frances Balfour in June 1910.² The fifth chapter of her Women's Suffrage (1912) concentrated on refuting anti-suffragist arguments and made no attempt to comprehend their mentality; it would be unreasonable to expect anything else from a suffrage leader in midcampaign. Suffragist MPs often predicted that posterity would be astonished to know that their movement had ever been opposed, and in parliamentary debates after the partial enfranchisement of British women in 1918 it became commonplace to dismiss the ‘amusing, if not grotesque’ anti-suffragist arguments.³ By the 1920s laughter and ridicule, which were at first the allies of the anti-suffragist, had changed sides.

‘The Antis’, as the suffragists contemptuously called them, suffered the threefold penalty – intellectual, moral and political – incurred by those who back the wrong horse in politics. Their arguments were seen as foolish and often mutually contradictory. Their motives were seen by suffragists at the time – let alone later – as a strange compound of prejudice and self-interest: ‘it is worse than useless to reason with moral corruption,’ the suffragist Maude Royden pronounced. The anti-suffragist Hensley Henson in 1913 ruefully drew a parallel between suffragists and anti-vivisectionists: both inflamed controversy by imputing low motives to their opponents. Sylvia Pankhurst, angered in 1954 by the successful subsequent public career of the anti-suffragist Violet Markham, spoke of ‘that foul traitor – who, while the suffragettes were hunger striking, appeared on the Albert Hall platform, surrounded by reactionaries like Lord Cromer and Lord Curzon, protesting against women having the vote.’⁴ The penalty was for the Antis to be ridiculed as misguided and unimportant, consigned to history's rubbish-heap. The Antis even lost confidence in themselves, or at least found activities more profitable than brooding over a past which some might regard as dubious. ‘In Oct [ober] 1918’, wrote Curzon on an envelope of correspondence now kept in the India Office Library,

after the final determination of the Women Suffrage struggle by the victory of the Suffragists I went through the whole of the sad correspondence that I had accumulated as one of the leaders of the anti suffrage movement 1910-1918… and decided that there was no object in keeping it since it would never interest any one and the cause had been lost.⁵

Historians nowadays will hardly share Lord Curzon's whiggish view of history. For several reasons his movement deserves rediscovery. This enterprise will for some readers require no justification, and they, together with those who find justifications tiresome and who prefer to take their history neat, may prefer at this point to move straight on to the final paragraph of this chapter. There is presumably no need nowadays to justify the serious historical study of women's organisations, because even those who feel that the historian's main emphasis before 1918 should be on the political activities of men must confess that the woman suffrage movement made some impact on the male political world; some might even admit that it provoked illuminating responses from that quarter. Nor does Curzon's movement deserve attention simply because it was, up to August 1914, on the winning side (though a case for that could be made out): for that would merely reintroduce whiggishness through the back door. There would be little virtue in merely supplanting a suffragist by an anti-suffragist view of British women's history.

One further objection is perhaps worth considering: have we not now heard quite enough about woman suffrage, and about the political dimension of the British women's movement? Do we not almost entirely lack histories of the modern British woman's life in the workplace, in the home, and in all the social, economic, religious and intellectual dimensions of her life? To this objection there is a threefold reply. No historian has so far thoroughly studied British anti-suffragism, whose history sheds new light on British suffragism and sets it more firmly into context. Besides, the neglect of one topic is not in itself any justification for neglecting another: and in any statement of research priorities, the opposition to woman suffrage deserves a high rating. While the social and economic role of modern British women urgently needs serious historical study, that role was profoundly influenced by many of the attitudes voiced by the anti-suffrage movement. Thirdly, there can be no clear distinction between political and any other type of history, and the study of anti-suffragism in its political dimension by no means excludes the discussion of its social, economic, intellectual and even physiological dimensions: indeed, the discussion of these aspects is integral to it, as Part One of this book aims to show.

The perspective on the woman suffrage movement and its opponents needs to embrace far more than the suffragists and the anti-suffragists. It must take account of at least two further publics: the government, whose difficulties and viewpoint have almost inevitably been neglected by suffragist commentators: and the general public, in so far as we can discover anything definite about it. Public opinion was influenced by several prominent pressure groups and reforming movements, of which the suffragists constituted only one. Governments must take account of all these groups – a point which the reformer's tunnel vision sometimes leads him to forget. Complexity was compounded by the fact that the suffragists were divided among themselves, and sometimes even pursued mutually contradictory policies. The historian who approaches the suffrage question from these four angles is the better equipped for his business of capturing the full flavour of events as they occurred in all their fluidity, unpredictability and confusion; he will see historical events in the round. Only from discussing the complicated interplay of these separate publics can a full appreciation of the political process emerge, for this is the first of the major gains to be made from studying the Antis. Only through reading history can the student gain any real understanding of what it is like to be a politician. The historian who is alive to the complexity of political sequences will understand the complicated way in which history moves forward, and will comprehend the situation of the politician for whom the future is always unclear and the present always beset with bewildering choices. He will wish to explain why events turned out as they did, but he will also wish to relate them to later developments. The task is impossible, but well worth the attempting.

There is a second major benefit, which transcends the history of British women. Anti-suffragism forces the historian to consider the factors in British society which inhibit reform. Modem British historians tend to neglect these forces, less because of Reds under the Academic Bed than because of a certain abdication by the conservatives themselves: an abdication not only by the Curzons, but by their academic successors of similar political temperament. Conservatives are profoundly dependent on a sense of history, but not in the same way as those reformers who see it as a source of inspiration in their present activity. For conservatives, historical events act more as an unconscious than as an overt influence; conservatives show little of the feminists’ and socialists’ enthusiasm for hoarding up their own history in specialist journals. If they write modern British history at all, it tends to take a biographical or group-biographical form. They write histories of the Conservative party, or biographies of Conservative politicians, but they rarely dwell analytically on the more impersonal social forces which make for stability rather than change. If conservative historians did full justice to such forces, their writings would be only tangentially concerned with the Conservative party: at times they would even be directly concerned with its rivals on the left. They would draw upon very scattered sources, and would analyse the spontaneous conservatism which is often only semi-articulate and is by no means fully catered for by the party. As it is, such forces are often how allowed to go by default as influences merely negative or carping, which act as a drag on historical progress. Yet in reality they often affect the precise nature and timing of reforms in such a way as to change their whole impact and significance; furthermore, there is at any one time often far more justification for caution than appears in retrospect.

In a decidedly anti-conservative analysis of the suffragist movement delivered to former suffragettes in 1932, Harold Laski admitted that in this instance, as elsewhere, conservatives had achieved far more than the mere postponement of a major reform: for if women's suffrage had been conceded in the 1860s, the whole history of British women thereafter would, he said, have been different. But because ‘privilege never retreats until the purpose of its retreat has already been won,’ women's suffrage in 1918 and 1928 merely registered at law a social change which was already complete.⁶ Laski's outlook on the matter was the impatient one of the reformer who sees only delay and postponement in the forces of stability, and who is unconcerned at the problems which would be created for a society whose conservatives all suddenly for some reason absented themselves. The history of any society involves an interaction between the forces making for stability and for change, and conservatives do far more than merely block inevitable reforms: furthermore, with the distance of time, their attitudes are often seen to have much in common with those of their opponents.

The neglect by modern British historians of conservative forces in society is understandable. When historians reach middle age they lack the time and enthusiasm required for doing justice to the subject: when they are young, they are not tempted by it. For moderating, delaying and unobtrusively modifying movements for change are hardly activities likely to inspire the young; they lack obvious drama and movement, and often leave no records behind. There is also perhaps something inherently unexciting about upholding the known instead of pioneering the unknown – because whereas the drawbacks of the known are always clear, the disadvantages of the unknown become clear only in the course of their arrival. There is also something rather dull about the methods conservatives use in opposing reform. Being less experienced and less imaginative in the art of agitation, and feeling a certain distaste for the arts of publicity, they trail haltingly behind the reformers in their techniques and styles of activity. Their tactics are necessarily defensive, and their organisations allow the reformers to retain the initiative. The ‘silent majority’ is slow to organise itself except on predictable and often ritual occasions, and tends to make less noise than its opponents. Conservatives prefer to allow the inherent force of existing institutions to do their work for them; reformers must come forward with exhilarating processions, propaganda and publicity if they are to make any impact. Up to 1908 hostility to woman suffrage was so strong that no anti-suffrage organisation was even required; and its unconstructive flavour has perhaps caused historians to ignore even the articulated opposition to the reform which emerged after 1908. ‘It was … a very difficult movement to manage,’ Lady Wantage told an anti-suffrage meeting in 1908, ‘because they were called upon to fight… for a negative.’⁷

The history of conservatism in its broadest sense is important not only for its own sake but as a complement to the history of reform. Reformers can hardly be understood in isolation from their opponents. Studying the opposition to reform corrects the reformer's tendency to exaggerate his following and importance at any one time. The fair-minded study of conservative forces in society has no partisan tendency. The reader with present-day reforming ambitions will be the better prepared by it for the fray – for in the light of such a discussion he will not underestimate the skill and persistence required for producing really effective change. Conversely the conservative who aims in his own day to hold back pressures for change will gain self-confidence from observing the tactical skill of his predecessors and the importance of conservative forces in the past.

The study of anti-suffragism is particularly important as an aid towards understanding suffragism. But first the relationship between suffragist organisations should perhaps be briefly explained. The nonmilitant section of the British suffragists – organised in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) – was democratic and federal in structure and descended directly from the suffragist organisations established in the 1860s. It was led by Mrs Fawcett, and its nonmilitancy refers only to its constitutional tactics; in its overall objective and dedication it was no less eager than the militants. The militant section of the British suffragist movement – normally labelled ‘suffragettes’ – originated in Mrs Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 in close collaboration with the Labour party. From 1906 this organisation moved steadily away from its original Labour connections, became increasingly authoritarian in structure, and adopted unorthodox tactics of a headline-raising type. These at first went no further than knocking at Asquith's door or engaging in purely technical assaults on policemen. But by 1908 the Union was engaged in mass lobbyings of Parliament; it moved forward to window-breaking and from 1909, after the imprisonment of its members, to hunger-striking. The final and most extreme stage of militancy – from 1912 – involved letter-burning, arson and other attacks on property. The WSPU always ran non-militant activity in parallel with its violence, but in its later years the violence became all-absorbing, and obstructed the non-violent work. The third major suffrage organisation, the Women's Freedom League, was an offshoot in 1907 from the WSPU, and differed from the parent body only in its democratic structure, its relative smallness, and its relative caution about resorting to militant tactics.

The term ‘suffragist’ will be used in this book to denote the members of all three organisations as a general category because (in contrast to the advocates of an adult suffrage which would enfranchise both sexes on a democratic basis) all three agreed in campaigning primarily for enfranchising women on the same limited basis as was at that time enjoyed by men. Their immediate aim was consciously feminist: to remove discrimination of sex from the existing franchise. The adult suffragists, by contrast, campaigned to democratise the franchise for both sexes, and operated within their own organisations, often in connection with the labour movement, quite separately from organised feminism. When it is important to distinguish militant suffragists from non-militant, the term ‘suffragette’ will be used for Mrs Pankhurst's militants, and ‘non-militant suffragist’ for the other two groups. The anti-suffragists, or Antis, opposed all types of suffragist and usually opposed adult suffrage as well; they were not organised into a permanent movement until 1908, when the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League – later National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage (NLOWS) – was founded. It survived until 1918.

Attempts to place the suffragists at the centre of the Edwardian stage have paradoxically minimised their achievement. Posterity is often seen by the beleaguered campaigner as an ally, yet when he eventually wins his campaign and recollects his opponents in tranquillity, he ridicules their short-sightedness and folly, and so unintentionally minimises the qualities he himself needed to display in pioneering a long-term shift in public attitudes. In this way, history is tidied up, and the generation immediately subsequent to the reform is presented with a simplified interpretation which is both comforting and readily digested. But although during their lifetimes reformers may feel it necessary to keep up their spirits by talking only to one another, in the longer term their audience necessarily grows larger and more sceptical.

The suffragettes and their champions have compounded the distortion by exaggerating the extent to which the Asquith government between 1908 and 1914, with its panoply of law enforcement agencies – police, prison warders and (still more sinister) prison doctors – operated independently of public opinion. Having played down the importance of the Antis by stressing their absurdity and failure to move with the times, the suffragette writers none the less needed to explain how it was that so many of their members went to prison and endured almost intolerable hardships there. The Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith therefore becomes the deus ex machina who solves their self-created historiographical problem; allying himself with anti-suffragist political conspirators, he is seen as simultaneously frustrating the will of the suffragettes and defying public opinion. But the suffragettes, courageous and clear-sighted, with history on their side, inevitably win through in the end. It is an entirely unconvincing picture, and H. G. Wells rightly ridiculed the suffragettes in 1911 for erecting Asquith into ‘the State Husband, the Official Wretch of the Woman Movement, the Depository of Feminine Repartee, the Public Hen-Peckee’.⁸

Whereas the writing of history and autobiography was, for the suffragettes and their eulogists, a mere continuation of their campaign – Asquith was presented with a splendid opportunity for self-vindication by the writing of his memoirs in the 1920s. He threw away the chance; for him, è finita la commedia. The historian must therefore make the special effort required to comprehend his point of view. Not that he gave the historian any help. One Sunday evening in 1912 when staying with the Asquiths, J. A. Pease discussed the question of Asquith's biography: but Asquith said it would never be written, Pease writes, because ‘he had covered up his tracks.’ As for his letters held by others, ‘he knew how to write to people in accordance with the prospect of letters being retained or destroyed and he wrote accordingly.’⁹ In reality, Asquith and his fellow Antis rested on the popular basis of support which, among other things, this book seeks to explain. For what complicates the reformer's task at any one time is the fact that his opponents may well have the appearance (however deceptive) of being intelligent, knowledgeable, public-spirited and reasonable, in tune with public opinion and adept at o...