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What methods did the suffragettes use, and how effective were these in gaining the vote for women?
from their campaigns.
The campaign for women’s suffrage can be split into three phases. These are the pioneering phase, the second phase, and the phase of militancy. The pioneering phase looks at the cause between 166 and 1870, and focuses upon the Reform Act of 1867. This phase was characterised by great optimism and spirited activity. Between 1870 and 1905 was the period of “doldrums” where the movement became muted and confused, this was the second phase. The final phase was that of militancy starting in around 1905. This is the phase that I am principally concerned with, and it has been described as the “flowering time of the women’s movement” by Strachard. This phase consisted of years of preparation, the cause was springing from new born enthusiasm, and the issues and concerns of the suffragists remained fundamentally unchanged.
The NUWSS falls between two phases, that of the doldrums and that of militancy. This depicts the attitude and approach that the suffragists took towards the suffrage movement. Early suffragists learned a lot about political tactics from their participation in the Anti-Corn Law campaigns of the early nineteenth century. It was here that the suffragists discovered organising public meetings, demonstrating, writing propaganda literature, raising money, lobbying MPs and petitioning Parliament. These were all traditional middle class methods of campaigning. The suffragists used a variety of legal methods to promote the cause, meetings being one of these. The NUWSS raised the question of women’s suffrage at trade union conferences and visited many of the major cotton towns to publicise the cause. By the beginning of the twentieth century meetings were being held at both fairs and wakes to publicise the case for women’s suffrage. The fact that these women were speaking in public was seen as unladylike and daring. Victorian society was shocked by the tactics, a case in point being when Millicent Fawcett and another suffragist spoke to a mixed audience at the Architectural Society in London in 1869. However by the end of the nineteenth century public speaking was commonplace and widely accepted, unless it took place at an unusual event, such as Fawcett being the first woman to debate at the Oxford Union in 1908. This method was effective for raising awareness in the early days of the suffrage movement, but as time went on the scandal and shame of public speaking was buried, and other methods needed to be found to shock the public and raise awareness.
Another legal method used by the suffragists was that of the ‘demonstration’ and ‘pilgrimage’. Both suffrage groups used demonstrations as a propaganda weapon, as the could draw members together in a feeling of communal identity, engender a sense of purpose, and further publicise votes for women. In February 1907 the first major demonstration by the NUWSS took place and [next page]