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Votes For Women
Votes For Women
One hundred years ago on 6th February 1918, women over thirty years of age were granted the right to vote in parliamentary elections for the very first time, under the new Representation of the People Act. Today, voting in our local and national elections is something we women now take for granted, so much so that many of us do not even bother to use that right. But in my Grandmothers' day, both born in the closing years of the Victorian era, women were still fighting hard to gain a say in the running of our country. The issue of women’s suffrage had started way back in 1832, but following a long and largely fruitless campaign, in 1903, Mrs. Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in order (The Suffragettes) to continue her efforts by more extreme action.
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, badge
A glimpse of Mumbles at the time
There were pro-suffrage meetings in many towns and villages up and down the country and Mumbles was no exception. The Mumbles Press reported that a well attended gathering under the auspices of another organisation, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies known as The Suffragists, which had been founded by Millicent Fawcett back in 1897, had been held at the Parish Hall, Mumbles in the first week of May 1913. It was presided over by the Rev. Harold Williams, Vicar of All Saints’ Church, who had always sympathised with the women’s suffrage movement, but strongly disapproved of the extreme methods of the militant wing (Suffragettes) as he felt that ‘they had materially retarded the progress of the cause’. However, he was certain ‘that women would ultimately get the vote . . . through the constitutional and sober methods of the others’. He said he was there to support the National Union ‘because it was a non-party and non-militant society . . . and as it was a logical and reasonable cause. . . emancipation would contribute to the betterment of the conditions under which people lived . . .'
He was followed by an eloquent address by Miss Streeter, the Organising Secretary for South Wales, who informed the meeting that the National Union was forty-two years old, embraced 420 Women’s Suffrage Societies and had a total membership of 42,400. Miss Amy Dillwyn, President of the Swansea Branch, proposed a vote of thanks and added that ‘as a taxpayer, she felt she had a reasonable claim to the right to vote.’
Millicent Fawcett
Mumbles Ladies
The following September, a ‘drawing-room’ meeting of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage was held at Dolgoy, the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Aeron Thomas, with Miss Dillwyn presiding, and attended by the Mayoress of Swansea, Mrs. David Williams, Mrs. Heneage, Rev. and Mrs. Harold Williams, Miss Richards of West Cross House, Miss Davies of Bryngelly, Mrs. Bertie Perkins, Mrs. Humphreys Davies, Mr. Hugh Vivian, Mrs. Lloyd Jones, Mr. Ingram, Mrs. Veale, Miss Dorothy Davies, Mr. Ted Forrester, Miss Kirkland, Mr. Ivor Evans, Mrs. Mills, Mr and Mrs. Finlayson and Mrs. Boulanger, who listened to Miss Dillwyn reporting on the discontent prevailing in the country and railed against the legislation of the classes and the great injustice to women that they should not be able to play a part in the making of the laws of the country.In 1913, The Rev. Harold Williams, Vicar of All Saints Church, Oystermouth preached at
Mumbles Press, 24 April 1915
Swansea’s Holy Trinity Church at a service of Intercession for the ‘honour of womanhood’ which was held during the National week of Prayer. He said that suffrage was a right and just cause and that ‘Women, by wanting the vote were not going to oust men of anything, but simply were seeking to become equal as citizens.’ By August 1914, Britain was at war with Germany and this brought a limited political truce, as women participated in the war effort, many undertaking jobs previously done only by men, although they would be required to vacate those jobs when the men returned from the services. This was perhaps, even before the end of the conflict, to be a major factor in the Government’s decision in 1918 to give women over 30 the right to vote (women over 21 would not be given this right until 1928). It is estimated that there were 100,000 Suffragists in the UK, but only 10,000 Suffragettes.
UPDATE
UPDATE
On 24th April 218, a statue to Dame Millicent Fowcett was unveiled in Parliament Square, London, to honour her long standing campaign for female sufferage.
A version of this article has been published in The Mumbles Times magazine, February 2018.
Acknowledgments
Mumbles Press, May 1913, September 1913, November 1913, August 1914, 24 April 1912
Amy Dillwyn, 1904
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