Voting rights & equality for women 1918 -2018
October 2018
The centenary (21st November 1918) of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was recently celebrated. This Act gave women aged over 21 the right to become MPs. At the same time, only women over 30 had the right to vote so women aged 21 – 29 could have stood for Parliament, but not been able to vote for themselves. And who says that truth is not stranger than fiction?
There have been lots of celebrations this year about the centenary of women being given the vote. However, you have to temper those celebration by realising that men and women only reached what you could define as true and equal franchise ten years later under The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.
Under the 1918 Act the vote was given to all men over age 21 and all women over age 30 who met minimum property qualifications. This tripled the electorate.
The 1928 Act widened suffrage by giving women electoral equality with men. It gave the vote to all women over 21 years old, regardless of property ownership. The Act added five million more women to the electoral roll and had the effect of making women a majority, 52.7%, of the electorate in the 1929 general election.
One of the celebratory documentaries earlier this year put forward a view that I had not heard before. It postulated that the reason women over 30 were given the vote was because these women were considered to be less radical and therefore more likely to vote Liberal at that time. You have to remember that after the 1917 Russian Revolution, many western countries feared that similar workers’ revolutions might take place in their own countries. This is one of the reasons that British, French and American forces intervened against the Revolution. (By the way, on 10 July 1918, the first constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic granted equal rights to men and women).
Call me cynical, but I find it difficult at times to celebrate some of these things. We are continually asked to pat ourselves on the back about our democracy as though it was 100s of years old and had come about through mutual consent possibly over a cup of tea and with the paternal influence of politicians and royalty. UK MPs often refer to the “Mother of all Parliaments” in reverentially hushed tones as if it was some peculiarly British invention or institution. Parliament itself derives from a French word parler – to talk. The Icelandic Vikings had a Parliament called the Althing founded in 930AD so that is the oldest parliament in the world. The ancient Greeks invented democracy in the 5th century BCE. You might rightly criticise it by saying it only extended to free-born adult male Greeks who were over 20 years old so not only were women excluded but the ancients Athenians also had slaves. Valid arguments, but do those conditions ring any bells with the state of affairs in Victorian Britain a full 2000 years after the Greeks.
The UK didn’t abolish slavery until 1833 and it was less than 100 years ago that men and women under 30 were granted electoral parity in the UK. It has taken protests and struggles to get where we are today and none of it was given away freely. It had to be demanded and/or fought for (and was fought against by those in power) all the way. And the struggle still isn’t over yet - particularly for women.
In 1970 The Equal Pay Act required that an employer pay its male and female employees equal pay for equal work. How strange that in April 2018 (nearly 50 years later) The Times could report “more than three out of four UK companies pay their male staff more than their female staff, and in 9 out of 17 sectors in the economy, men earn 10 per cent or more on average than women.” Some women will have grown up, had jobs and retired or passed away in those 50 years and somehow equal pay still has not come to pass.
As for women in Parliament, anyone who has been on one of the tours of the Commons with my MP John Cryer will know that Constance Markievicz, (not Nancy Astor) was the first woman elected to the British Parliament in 1918. Ms Markievicz, running for Sinn Féin, conducted the election from a cell in Holloway prison, where she was serving time for her part in the 1916 Easter Rising.
However, after that great start, let's also keep in mind that since 21st November 1918, only 500 women have taken their places in the Commons, compared to over 4,500 men.
As one politician once famously said “Lots done, lots more still to do”.
Solidarity
Brian Madican
Nov 2018
