Posted: December 10th, 2014

Part A –Plan of Investigation

To what extent were the Suffragettes the reason women gained the right to vote in the UK in the year 1918?

Suffrage is the right to vote. Until 1918, women in UK were not allowed to vote in elections, although in 1897, a group known as Suffragists called for suffrage for women, but it was only with the formation of the Suffragettes in 1903 that the real debate began about women’s suffrage. The Suffragettes were radical, with actions such as chaining themselves to railings, burning down churches or going on hunger strike in prison. So, the Suffragettes publicized women’s suffrage with their extreme tactics.

However, it was World War 1,which really gave women the right to vote. With men away fighting at the front, women proved that they were vital to the running of the country, as they provided essential support during wartime. David Lloyd George, a strong supporter of women’s suffrage, became Prime Minister in 1916, and this, far more than the actions of the Suffragettes, led to women gaining the suffrage in 1918. I will use secondary sources and primary sources in order to see different perspectives and learn about the view points of a variety of historians.

Part B- Summary Of Evidence

Until the beginning of the Twentieth Century, there was little demand on women for votes. In fact, for many people the vote was irrelevant because they were more concerned with trying to find work, food, and some place to live. Therefore, it is not surprising that the demand for suffrage for women was led by a group of women. However, this group of women was mainly composed of middle class women such as Emmeline Pankhurst. Their demand was votes for women, but as is pointed out by her daughter, Sylvia who was also deeply involved in the Suffragette movement, pointed out that “twenty percent of men were also disenfranchised.” In fact, there were more working class women than middle class women, but the main suffragette movement concentrated its efforts on this much smaller group of middle class women.

When the First World War started, men were increasingly drafted into the military, leaving women behind to do the work previously carried out by men. This work was mainly done by working class women, as described by Sylvia Pankhurst. They became radicalized and from their new position in life, were more open to seeing the value of the vote than they had been before the war. This is the group of people that Sylvia Pankhurst worked with, but for her, suffrage for women was only one right that women lacked. She wanted the vote, but she also wanted improved living conditions and improved working conditions for women.

Meanwhile, the main body of the suffragettes gave their support to the war, but not physically by working in factories. They made sure that the government knew that they were patriotic and would not attempt to stop the war effort. It is true that women were given the vote to a limited degree at the end of the war, but it is not easy to decide or to discover if this was because of the work of the suffragettes, or because of the way women were able to keep industry going during the war. It seems it was probably a mix of the two.

Chris Trueman  points out that in 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst ordered her supporters to stop their campaign of violence and to support the government in every way possible. From 1905 until 1914, the suffragettes had carried out a campaign which became increasingly more violent. They smashed all the windows in Oxford Street, they chained themselves to the railings of Buckingham Palace, they even burned a house belonging to David Lloyd George, who actually supported women’s rights. When they went to prison, they went on hunger strike, and tried to win public support for their actions by making people feel sorry and worried about their health. However, all this action did not actually persuade any government to give women the vote. In contrast, four years of women working for the war effort led to women being given the vote in 1918. Therefore, it is difficult to see how the suffragettes can claim to be the reason why women won the vote. Since four years before the vote was given, they were not involved in any major political attempt to influence politicians.

Part C–Evaluation Of Sources

Source 1:
Trueman, Chris. “The Suffragettes.” The Suffragettes. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/suffragettes.htm>.

The Origin of this source comes from a website called History Learning Site. The web page was written by Chris Trueman, a Historian who has been teaching history and Politics at a secondary school for the past 26 years. The Purpose of this web page is to educate people on the Suffragettes of the UK and teach them about the process and all the sacrifices that were made so that women could gain the right to vote. This website is a secondary source as it was written after the event took place, which means that it contains several Values and Limitations. Because this is a secondary source, the historian has the benefit of hindsight, which makes the source reliable and means that he can look at how certain actions affected the outcome. Another benefit of the source is that it is less biased than a primary source because strong emotions would have died out by now and because the historian has no connection to the people involved in the events. However, because this is a secondary source, there are also some Limitations. One of the Limitations is that the historian was not an eye witness to the event so he could not give a personal account of what had happened. Trueman could not evaluate the feelings of the people who were associated with the occurrence.

Source 2:
Pankhurst, Sylvia E. The Suffragette Movement – An Intimate Account Of Persons And Ideals. 2010. Print.

The Origin of this source is a book which was published in the year 1901 by Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, a suffragette. The Purpose of this book is to defend her mother’s actions to the world and to also show that she agreed with her mother in what she committed to. There are many benefits to this primary source; the first being that she was an eye-witness to the event, she knew what people were thinking and feeling as they went through it. Human emotion was shown because her mother being involved in it meant very much to her. The first Limitation is that it was so personal to her that she was affected by it and couldn’t look at other perspectives. Another clear Limitation is that she was biased, having one viewpoint of the situation.

Part D – Analysis

Women in UK began to ask for the vote in the late 19th century. However, Britain was not the only country in which this demand for votes had arisen. In 1893, women in New Zealand were given the right to vote after two years of campaigning and presenting parliament with a petition signed by thousands of people. In 1902, Australian women were able to vote and in 1906, Finland also gave votes to women. Therefore, it is clear that the topic of votes for women was not exclusive to United Kingdom, but was being discussed and requested by women in many parts of the world. In these three countries, suffrage was granted to women without the necessity of violent tactics employed by the suffragettes in their campaigns in the United Kingdom. The suffragettes, and especially the Pankhurst’s seemed to believe that it was possible to gain the vote in United Kingdom, but disagreed on the tactics to use. Until the beginning of the First World War, their tactics were those of direct action such as chaining themselves to railings, and increasing the violent demonstrations. “The first decade of Britain in the 20th century was proving to be violent in the extreme” . The death of one suffragette who threw herself in front of a horse belonging to the King in a race showed the extent to which they were willing to go. However, these tactics were abandoned when the First World War began and it seemed to be unpatriotic to continue protesting while men were fighting and dying in France and Belgium. In fact, this change of direction was probably connected with the majority of Suffragettes being middle class and educated women. The war opened avenues to working class women and gave them opportunities to take jobs which had previously been considered only appropriate for men. Women worked on farms, in factories making munitions, and in general, helping the war effort. Therefore, it was difficult for politicians after the war to continue to insist that women should not be granted the right to vote, given that they had worked so successfully in jobs that would previously have been unthinkable for women to do. Nevertheless, women were given the vote in 1918, although the voting age for women was higher than the voting age for men. The suffragette movement did not continue to press for equal voting rights for women and seems to have disappeared from public view after 1918.

Part E –Conclusion

It is clear that without the pressure from the suffragettes, the issue of votes for women would not have been important to politicians. If no one is demanding a change in the law, politicians are unlikely to want to change it. It’s true that the suffragettes played an important role in winning the votes for women, however their tactics of using violence probably lost them support among the majority of people in Britain. Britain was a society with clearly defined hierarchy and these middle class women were acting in ways that were shocking to the majority of people. History teaches that non violent action such as led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King can produce results that violence cannot. The fact that women in Britain showed that they were capable of keeping the country’s economy running by working in factories and on the land meant that people realized that the traditional view of women as belonging in the home was outdated. If that view was outdated, the view that women had no place in politics was also outdated. So it appears that there were two major factors responsible for getting the suffrage for women. The first was the publicity generated by the suffragettes, but the principle reason was women working in jobs previously considered to be suitable only for men altered the established view of the role of women in society.

Bibliography:

Books:

Boyd, Edward. The Suffragette Movement. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Pankhurst, Sylvia E. The Suffragette Movement – An Intimate Account Of Persons And Ideals. 2010. Print.

Internet Sources:

“Did the Suffragettes Help?” Did the Suffragettes Help Women’s Suffrage? N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2012. <http://www.johndclare.net/Women2_DidSuffragettesHelp.htm>.

“Suffragettes.” Suffragettes. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Sept. 2012. <http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/struggle/suffragettes1/suffragettes.html>.

Trueman, Chris. “The Suffragettes.” The Suffragettes. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/suffragettes.htm>.

“Women’s Suffrage.” Women’s Suffrage. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2012. <http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/suffrage.htm>.

use these resources for this assignment.

(1) Bowen, Catherine Drinker.  1986.  Miracle at Philadelphia.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Back Bay Books.

(2) Jordan, Terry L., Ed. The U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It. (7th edition).  Naperville, Illinois:  Oak Hill.

(3) Patterson, Thomas. We the People (10th edition). New York, New York: McGraw-Hill.

this should be a self reflection essay so try not to use citations it’s not meant to be as a research.

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