Who on earth would oppose votes for women now? Not I, for one, and I like to think I’d have been against the denial of votes on the grounds of sex had I been alive and able to express an opinion 110 years ago. In fact, the formal exclusion of women from the vote in Britain was quite modern and like many bad things, achieved by reformers. It was part of the 1832 Great Reform Act, generally viewed as an unmixed blessing by modish opinion (the Act, as well as taking the votes from some women householders also disenfranchised quite a few industrial areas, according to the interesting account of it in Robert Tombs’s ‘The English and their History’).
But I wasn’t very impressed by the new film ‘The Suffragettes’, launched this week amid warm waves of praise. The good things about it seem to me to have been things the makers didn’t intend to be good. We are, I think, supposed to admire the guts and determination of the (fictional) working-class suffragette from the Bethnal Green laundry, who throws herself into the fight, incidentally destroying her family as a result ; and that of the bomb-making pharmacist, and would-be woman doctor (said to be based on a real person, though I’ve been unable to find full details) , played by Helena Bonham Carter; and of the Suffrage martyr Emily Wilding Davison, who died (very probably by accident – she bought a return ticket to Epsom) beneath the hooves of the King’s horse at the Derby.
I found myself more taken with the men who tried in various ways to persuade women known to them to stay away from dangerous and tragic fanaticism, which almost always (I should know, as an ex-fanatic) eats the souls of those who engage in it. The film doesn’t really address the argument always made in my schooldays, that the suffragettes, with their violence, arson and vandalism, alienated more people than they inspired, and that it was the conscription of women into the workforce in 1914 that actually led to the social revolution we then had, including votes for (some) women.
It was an interesting campaign, quirkier and more paradoxical than many now recognise. Quite a lot of women were against the suffragettes, and there’s a strong suspicion that the Liberal Party feared that women voters would tend to be Tories (women in those days were famous for their conservatism) and so did their best to postpone the matter. Republican France, it is interesting to note, didn’t give women the vote till 1944.
But I’ve always been struck by this most effective poster favouring women’s suffrage from the pre-1914 era
I can’t find a bigger or clearer representation of it, but the message is clear. It is absurd that educated, wise, hardworking or dutiful persons should not have the vote. By implication (though this is not explored) it is strange and perhaps wrong that convicted criminals, and various other categories of subject should keep it. Today we should be (rightly) unhappy with such terms as ‘lunatic’ or ‘unfit for service’ , and many nowadays regard habitual drunkenness as a blameless disease (I do not take this view). But if we are honest, most people would have some doubts about the continued granting of votes to those whose behaviour has been or is criminal, or otherwise damaging and marked by habitual irresponsibility and rashness. That impeccable liberal, David Cameron, is (for instance) almost obsessed with his noisy desire to keep votes away from serving prisoners. Whether he really cares about this, I do not know. But he is not ashamed to appear to care.
We are still allowed to agree with the top half of the poster. But thinking about the bottom half is more difficult. The idea that suffrage must and should at all times be universal is now an unquestioned (and unquestionable) pillar of modern secular faith. The absolute belief in the absolute virtue of the masses has already achieved a threefold victory in this country since 1948 – the abolition of the quirky University seats in parliament, which were often occupied by distinguished and exceptional individuals who would have been hard put to enter Parliament any other way, the abolition of Aldermen in local government, whose experience and wisdom is in my view still much missed, and the destruction of the House of Lords as it was (though there is yet to be a satisfactory or even half-way useful replacement). This rejection of the hereditary title to office, whose supporters feel no need to argue a case they think is self-evident, implicitly menaces the monarchy. Everyone is too polite to mention it while the present Queen is still among us, but what will happen when she is not?
This unanimity means that universal suffrage (or the abolition of unelected chambers such as the Lords and the US Senate used to be) cannot possibly be reconsidered or withdrawn. Those who doubt the absolute wisdom of the people have to concede the universal suffrage principle. Only then can they come up with ideas I’ve discussed before, giving extra votes to some citizens (such as Nevil Shute’s scheme for additional votes, granted for achievement, life experience, skill at work, successful raising of children, or other distinction, explained in his novel ‘In the Wet’).
I just think that if you ponder the sheer wrongness of denying Votes for Women, because they are women (a wrongness which is self-evident, because it is irrational) you have in all honesty to think about whether Equal Votes for Everybody is a particularly sensible idea, and if so why. It doesn’t seem especially rational to me. Do we apply the same principle to anything else? I can’t offhand think of any other example, but perhaps I am not trying hard enough.
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