Kier Hardie

“ So true it is that one end of the chain which binds the slave is fastened round the life of his master, that the emancipation of women will also infallibly give freedom to the man. Curious are the changes which a quarter of a century, produces in the political horizon. Questions arise, no larger than a man's hand at first, and are driven by the force of agitation nearer the arena in which the political strife of the day is waged, and keep gathering size as they approach, until they obscure everything else. ”

“ Nowhere is woman treated as the free and equal companion of man. Amongst coloured peoples living in a state of nature and in a tribal environment, which has evolved itself, and wherein custom is the only law, the woman, though far from being the degraded creature which she has so often been pictured by superficial observers, is still her husband's drudge, and frequently a part of his wealth. ”

“ One would have thought the record of the Liberal party in connection with Woman Suffrage would have chastened the ardour of those organs of Liberalism which are opposing this Bill in the interests of "true female suffrage"; but the gift of perspective is rare in politics, and a strict desire for accuracy an inconvenient failing when there are party ends to serve. ”

“ If they will, as I think they should, make it not a test but the test question at elections, and resolutely refuse to work for, or in any way countenance any candidate who is not whole-heartedly with them, they will, if not in this Parliament, then certainly in the next, secure the passage of a measure through the House of Common's at least, which will place them on terms of political equality with men. If this comes as part of a measure for giving complete adult suffrage, well and good; but political equality they should insist upon, whatever the conditions of that equality may be. ”

“ The Woman's Enfranchisement Bill does not concern itself with franchise qualifications; it is for the removal of the sex disqualification only; and yet on the present franchise qualifications and reactionary registration laws it would at once lift 1,250,000 British women from the political sphere to which "idiots, lunatics, and paupers" are consigned, and transform them into free citizens, and open wide the door whereby in the future every man and every woman may march side by side into the full enjoyment of adult suffrage. ”

“ The male man, even he of the working classes, will not lightly or all at once part with the authority which has so long been his, and admit that the wife of his bosom is his political equal. But once women are admitted to citizenship and some women become voters, the male mind will insensibly accustom itself to the idea of woman citizenship, and the way be thus prepared for adult suffrage complete and unrestricted by sex, poverty, or marriage. ”

“ To deal with the Woman question as a whole would involve a long inquiry into the causes responsible for the differences in the status of the sexes, including woman's economic position, the marriage laws, and our social polity. These are all subjects interwoven with the position of women, but they are beyond the scope of my ability, and for the moment I leave them aside and confine myself to the one question of their political enfranchisement. ”

“ Any one who takes the trouble to read the Bill quoted above will note that it does not propose any franchise qualification, but asks that, whatever the qualification, women shall enjoy the franchise on the same basis as men. It is a Bill which only proposes to do one thing, and that is, to remove the sex disability which debars a woman, because she is a woman, from becoming a voter. If the qualification for men be a property one, it shall be the same for women, no more and no less ”

“ I say that in a country governed by a woman—where you allow women to form part of the other estate of the realm—peeresses in their own right, for example—where you allow a woman not only to hold land, but to be a lady of the manor and hold legal courts—where a woman by law may be a churchwarden and overseer of the poor— I do not see, where she has so much to do with the State and Church, on what reasons, if you come to right, she has not a right to vote. ”

“ Already we see how the intensity of the struggle for political recognition is developing, in individual cases, those qualities of mind .and brain which man has been wont, to assume as being his special monopoly; and from these cases we may infer; how richly endowed the field of human thought will become when enriched by the products of the brains of men and women working together on terms of equality, and free from the debasing and sinister influences which subjection, in any form, imposes alike upon the subdued and the subduer. ”

“ In the military state of social evolution, or the age of chivalry as it has been dubbed by persons of a poetic temperament and a vivid imagination, woman is the weaker and more spiritualized sex, requiring to be protected by her lord, and almost worshipped as a superior creation. "Half angel, half idiot." aptly describes this conception of woman. This is but a perverted way of declaring her inferiority; the homage paid to her is much like that we should pay to a child: in no sense is it a recognition of equality; very often it is the exact opposite. ”

“ The judges relied on the case of Chorlton v. Lings as the ground of their decision. Now, in view of these decisions, the situation is quite clear.
A woman, for the purposes of citizenship, has no legal existence in England, and has to be created before she can be enfranchised. To the uninitiated this may appear absurd and ridiculous, but it the plain, unvarnished truth none the less. A woman may be a criminal, a queen, a tax and rate payer and owner of property, but she may not be a citizen of Great Britain and Ireland until a right to become such has been created by Act of Parliament. ”

“ In modern life we get back to the savage stage. Woman of the working class is again the drudge who does the menial work. Her husband works for and is dependent for the opportunity to work, upon a master; his wife works for, and is dependent for her livelihood to, a husband. That there are varying degrees of this feeling of subjection goes without saying, and I think it could be shown that the position of women, as of most other things, has always been better, more near an equality with man, in Celtic than in non-Celtic races or tribes. ”

“ Women whose circle of interests is circumscribed by her pots, pans, and scrubbing brushes, varied by an occasional gossip with a neighbour or quarrel with her husband, can never, however affectionate, be other than a curb upon the opening, eagerly questioning intelligence of her children. ”

“ It is only by removing the disabilities and restraints imposed upon woman; and permitting her to enter freely into competition with man in every sphere of human activity, that her true position and function in the economy of life will ultimately be settled. We can at present form no conception of what woman is capable of being, or doing. ”

“ There are, roughly, 7,000,000 electors in Great Britain, of whom 220,000 are lodger voters. A very large proportion of these are workmen, and it is doubtful whether rich men's sons, qualifying from their fathers' property, account for more than 20,000 of the whole. Even were a like number of daughters to be put upon the voters' roll, they would not, save in those few constituencies where the property vote is already overwhelming, and where, therefore, they could do no harm—save in these few cases, I say, they would not constitute an appreciable fraction of any constituency. ”

“ The cases of an overseer and a constable were before him, and what I deduce from his judgment is, that for such somewhat obscure offices as these, exercised often in a remote part of the country, where nobody else could have been found who could exercise them, women had been admitted into them, by way of exception, and that, striking out those exceptions, the act of voting in such matters being a public function, primd facie and according to the constitutional and common law, a woman cannot exercise it. ”

“ I hold it to be true with those who say that the foundation upon which this equality is to be reared is the political enfranchisement of women.
In sentiment we have advanced somewhat since 1790, when a learned writer of the period explained that people who should not be included in the county franchise were those who "lie under natural incapacities, and therefore cannot exercise a sound discretion, or (who are) so much under the influence of others that they cannot have a will of their own in the choice of candidates. ”

“ It is impossible to lay down a strict definition of the term 'working class,' but for this purpose it will be sufficient to regard as 'working class women' those who work for wages, who are domestically employed, or who are supported by the earnings of wage-earning children. ”

“ Hitherto I have been dealing with those opponents whose objection to the Bill is that it does not go far enough, and who prefer waiting for a measure of adult suffrage under which every man and every woman, married and single alike, shall be enfranchised at one stroke. ”

“ Now, I have had some experience of politics and of political methods, and I give it as my deliberate opinion that nothing would so much hasten the coming of that much-to-be-desired time as would the passing of the Woman's Enfranchisement Bill, If the workers were prepared to lay every other reform on the shelf, and begin an agitation for adult suffrage, they might, if specially fortunate, be successful in getting it about the year 1929. Manhood suffrage could probably be secured almost at once and for the asking ”

“ There are those who see in this innocent-looking measure, a sinister attempt to extend and strengthen the property qualification, and by enfranchising propertied women enable these to range themselves on the side of the reactionaries in opposing the enfranchisement of working-class women. ”

“ In Miss Hall's case, 1900, the right of a woman to become a law agent in Scotland was denied by the judges on the ground that "person " when it is a case of exercising a public function means "male person." ”

“ In so far as the service franchise will give women the right to vote, those brought in will be working women, and we may pit these against the daughters of the rich. It will, I think, be concluded that the great bulk of those who will be enfranchised by the Bill will be householders, and here, I repeat, we have reliable data upon which to base our conclusions. ”

“ Thus in Scotland a woman speaks of her husband as her "man," whilst in Staffordshire he is always spoken of as "the master."
The universality of this subjection of woman is assumed by many as an-infallible testimony to the truth of the theory that woman must in some way be inferior to man. ”

“ It is not my purpose to write a learned dissertation or even an elaborate essay on the Woman question; this has been done by men and women well qualified for the task, and doubtless will be again. My present object is to re-state in plain and homely language the case for Woman Suffrage. ”

“ Despite this pleading, the judges decided that women had no statutory right to be recognized as citizens, and that until that right was expressly conferred upon them by Act of Parliament, they must remain outside the pale of the franchise. ”

“ In the fifth clause he found that after saying that every 'man' should be entitled to be registered, it proceeds to say, 'or a male person in any University who has passed any senior middle examination.' In the light of Lord Brougham's Act, if the Court of Queen's Bench had to decide to-morrow on the construction of these clauses, they would be constrained to hold that they conferred the suffrage on female persons, as well as on males. ”

“ Her labour is coming into competition with that of man in nearly every department of industry. In the learned professions she is forcing herself to the front by sheer determination and force of intellect in a way that will not be denied. ”

“ And the main difficulty in the way would be the enfranchisement of all women, married and living with their husbands, as well as single. The leap from what is now to what this proposes is too great for the mind of the British elector to grasp, and not by any means the least of the opposition would come from the working classes. ”

“ As for the outvoters, we may surely anticipate, with some degree of assurance, that the coming Liberal Government will at least put an end to their existence, and so we need not worry ourselves about them one way or the other. ”

“ None of them are within the ken of politics, nor should they be brought into the political arena until women are in a position to influence equally with men the creation of opinion upon them, and, where necessary, the legislation which may be required to assist in solving them. ”

“ They are debated, wrangled over, and made leading issues at General Elections, and even whilst the strife which their coming has caused waxes hot, they begin to move' away from. sight without having been resolved. ”