Does Stephen Fry mean us?
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http://qi.com/infocloud/votes-for-womenI assume they could be contacted and asked for their source…
Young Master Smeet wrote:http://qi.com/infocloud/votes-for-womenI assume they could be contacted and asked for their source…You mean of this:
Quote:The 'suffragists', established in 1897, believed in peaceful campaigning, persuasion and the Liberal party. Emmeline Pankhurst’s 'suffragettes' established in 1903, favoured direct action (smashing windows, arson, hunger strikes, etc). Both groups only sought votes for property-owning women. This reduced support among socialists, who were against sexual discrimination but unwilling to campaign for even more votes for the middle classes.I understood that the leading lights of the suffrage movement were members of, or close to, the ILP.of course the ILP wasn't shy of seeking liberal support in parliament, so perhaps Fry is making a socialist critique of the reformists?
I see it's more complicated than I thought. Just found this:
Quote:•ILP advocated universal suffrage (the vote for men and women). This meant a lack of support within the Party for a separate women’s suffrage bill.••ILP ambivalence also because suffragists demand for the vote, ‘on same terms as men’ would have mostly enfranchised propertied middle and upper class women who traditionally voted Conservative.While the ILP campaigned for universal suffrage under capitalism we said that enough workers already had the vote to win control of political power once they had become socialist, adding of course that bringing in universal suffrage would be one of the first measures introduced after the working class had won political power for socialism. There are quite a few articles in the archives section here showing what we said at the time. For example: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1900s/1908/no-46-june-1908/suffragette-humbug http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1913/no-111-november-1913/franchise-questions
Young Master Smeet wrote:I assume they could be contacted and asked for their source…I emailed them and just got this reply:
Quote:Thanks very much for your email – this page was put together from script notes for the 'Ladies and Gents' episode of QI Series L. The information came from an article in History Today’s ‘History Review' (1997, issue 27) “The Women’s Movement” by Martin Pugh.Have you got east access to the HIstory Today article to see what it said?
Ach, it was easier to find than I thought (lousy reference they gave).http://www.historytoday.com/martin-pugh/womens-movement
Quote:In Britain, on the other hand, domestic politics complicated and delayed female enfranchisement. While the women enjoyed allies amongst Radical Liberals, they had to adjust to the unexpected dominance of Conservatism in the late Victorian era. In time the suffragists' arguments began to reflect a Conservative view, and a growing number of Conservative MPs supported them. Yet this advance only aroused suspicions amongst Liberal and Labour politicians as to whether women voters would favour the Conservatives and whether a limited measure designed to enfranchise property-owning women would damage their party interests. This antagonism between feminists and the left-wing parties eventually provoked die militant suffragette campaign which was a distinctive feature of the movement in Britain'. But militancy actually delayed enfranchisement in the sense that by repudiating and alienating the labour movement the Pankhursts deprived their campaign, of die working-class support which would have frightened the government.Just got another reply from them:
Quote:Hmm, apologies, I forwarded your email to the curator for the script who provided that source from his notes. The particular detail which you highlighted must have come from elsewhere – I'll have a dig around but I'm afraid we don't have anything to show you immediately since that article was the only reference attached to this note. I'll let you know if I find anything.The mystery continues.
In a book on Women and Socialism by a US Trotskyist (member of the ISO) which we've been sent for review, the author Sharon Smith reveals that others in Germany and elsewhere took the same attitude as us towards the Women's Movements that demanded votes for women on the same terms as men:
Quote:For example, the early-twentieth-century German women's suffrage movement did not challenge the property requirements that denied working-class men the right to vote — knowing that such requirements would also deny voting rights to working-class women. Maintaining such property requirements could only strengthen the political weight ol the middle and upper classes, while the working class would remain politically voiceless.And describing discussions within the Second International:
Quote:The issue of whether to fight for "universal" or "partial" women's suffrage was a strong point of controversy. Some women's suffrage organizations demanded (and in some European countries, won) partial suffrage for women—with voting rights based upon property holding and the payment of taxes (that is, restricting voting rights to those women of financial means). But in many of these same societies, male suffrage was also partial, denying working-class men the right to vote. Thus, partial suffrage merely increased the voting power of the upper classes.
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