The Aftermath of Suffrage Also by Julie V. Gottlieb FEMININE FASCISM: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 THE CULTURE OF FASCISM: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (co-edited with Thomas Linehan) MAKING REPUTATIONS: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics (co-edited with Richard Toye) Also by Richard Toye CHURCHILL’S EMPIRE: The World That Made Him and the World He Made THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE PLANNED ECONOMY, 1931–1951 LLOYD GEORGE AND CHURCHILL: Rivals for Greatness RHETORIC: A Very Short Introduction THE UN AND GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: Trade, Finance and Development (with John Toye) The Aftermath of Suffrage Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918–1945 Edited by Julie V. Gottlieb Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Sheffield and Richard Toye Professor of Modern History, University of Exeter Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye 2013 All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-01533-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-137-01534-1 ISBN 978-1-137-33300-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137333001 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Contents List of Illustrations, Tables and Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Introduction 1 Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye 1 Emmeline Pankhurst in the Aftermath of Suffrage, 1918–1928 19 June Purvis 2 From Prudent Housewife to Empire Shopper: Party Appeals to the Female Voter, 1918–1928 37 David Thackeray 3 The Impact of Mass Democracy on British Political Culture, 1918–1939 54 Pat Thane 4 The House of Commons in the Aftermath of Suffrage 70 Richard Toye 5 Enfranchisement, Feminism and the Modern Woman: Debates in the British Popular Press, 1918–1939 87 Adrian Bingham 6 ‘Doing Great Public Work Privately’: Female Antis in the Interwar Years 105 Philippe Vervaecke 7 Towards an Archaeology of Interwar Women’s Politics: The Local and the Everyday 124 Karen Hunt and June Hannam 8 ‘Shut Against the Woman and Workman Alike’: Democratising Foreign Policy Between the Wars 142 Helen McCarthy 9 ‘We Were Done the Moment We Gave Women the Vote’: The Female Franchise Factor and the Munich By-elections, 1938–1939 159 Julie V. Gottlieb v vi Contents 10 ‘They Have Made Their Mark Entirely Out of Proportion to Their Numbers’: Women and Parliamentary Committees, c. 1918–1945 181 Mari Takayanagi 11 The Political Autobiographies of Early Women MPs, c.1918–1964 203 Krista Cowman 12 ‘Women for Westminster,’ Feminism, and the Limits of Non-Partisan Associational Culture 224 Laura Beers Selected Bibliography 243 Index 244 List of Illustrations, Tables and Figures Illustrations 1 A dvertisement for Woman’s Party Meeting, 16 March 1918 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection) 22 2 E mmeline and Christabel Pankhurst campaigning in Smethwick December 1918 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection) 22 3 E mmeline Pankhurst c. 1919 with her four ‘adopted’ daughters, from left to right, Elizabeth Tudor, Flora Mary Gordon, Joan Pembridge and Kathleen King (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection) 23 4 T he Unveiling of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Statue, Victoria Tower Gardens, Westminster, March 1930 (June Purvis Private Suffrage Collection). It was moved to another site in the Gardens, closer to the Houses of Parliament, in 1956 23 5 C artoon from The Popular View, March 1923 (reproduced courtesy of the Conservative Party) 77 Tables 10.1 List of select committees with women members 187 10.2 Standing committees: total contribution of individual women MPs 192 Figures 10.1 Number of women MPs and number of women MPs on Select Committees 185 10.2 Number of women MPs and number of women MPs on standing committees 186 10.3 Standing committee debates: comparison of women and men 191 vii Notes on Contributors Laura Beers is Assistant Professor of History at the American University in Washington, DC. She is the author of Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (2010), and several articles on British political history. Adrian Bingham is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Gender, Modernity, and the Popular Press in Inter- War Britain (2004), and Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–78 (2009). Krista Cowman is Professor of History at the University of Lincoln. She has published extensively on the history of suffrage in Britain and on women and politics more generally including Women of the Right Spirit (2007) and Women in British Politics 1689–1979 (2010). Julie V. Gottlieb is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923–1945 (2000), co-editor of The Culture of Fascism (2004) and Making Reputations (2005). She has published extensively on women, gender and politics, and she is currently working on a study of gender and appease- ment in inter-war Britain. June Hannam is Professor Emeritus in Modern British History, University of the West of England, Bristol. Her books include Isabella Ford, 1855–1920 (1989, with Karen Hunt) Socialist Women, 1880s–1920s (2002) and Feminism (2012). She has published articles on socialism and feminist politics in the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries, on the Bristol women’s movement and on Labour Party women organisers. Her current research interests are women’s politics in Bristol after enfranchisement and Labour Party women MPs and candidates in the inter-war years. Karen Hunt is Professor of Modern British History at Keele University. She has published widely on aspects of local, national and transnational wom- en’s politics (1880–1939) as well as on the gendering of politics, including Equivocal Feminists (1996) and, with June Hannam, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s (2002). She juggles a number of interrelated projects includ- ing women and the politics of food on the First World War home-front, the life and politics of Dora Montefiore (1851–1933) as well as a comparative study on the effect of enfranchisement on local women’s politics, out of which the chapter in this volume has grown. She continues to delve deeper into the history of Manchester women’s politics, particularly how it was experienced in everyday life within local neighbourhoods. viii Notes on Contributors ix Helen McCarthy is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London. She studied for her first degree at the University of Cambridge and completed her PhD at the Institute of Historical Research on the topic of interwar internationalism. A revised version was recently published as The British People and the League of Nations: Citizenship, Democracy and Internationalism, c.1918–1945 (2011). Before joining Queen Mary in 2009, Helen held a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge. She is a member of the editorial board of Reviews in History, Reviews Editor for Twentieth Century British History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. June Purvis is Professor of Women’s and Gender History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She has published widely on women’s history in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and is currently researching the Edwardian suffragette movement. Her many publications include Emmeline Pankhurst: a biography (2002) and the co-edited Women’s Activism Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (2012) in which she has a chapter on suffragette Christabel Pankhurst’s text The Great Scourge. June is the Editor of Women’s History Review and also the Editor for a Routledge Book Series on Women’s and Gender History. From 2005 to 2010 she was the Secretary and Treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She is currently writing a biography of Christabel Pankhurst. Mari Takayanagi is a full-time professional archivist at the Parliamentary Archives, London, working in public services and outreach. She was awarded a PhD in History by King’s College London in August 2012. Her doctoral thesis title is ‘Parliament and Women, c.1900–1945’ and her research exam- ines the passage of legislation affecting women’s lives and gender equality between 1918 and 1928, the role of women on Select Committees and Standing Committees, and the employment of women staff in the House of Commons and House of Lords. She previously read Modern History as an undergraduate at St John’s College, Oxford, graduating with first-class hon- ours, and has an MA in Archives and Records Management from University College London. David Thackeray is a lecturer at the University of Exeter. His book Conserv- atism for the Democratic Age: Conservative Cultures and the Challenge of Mass Politics in Early Twentieth Century England will be published in in 2013. Pat Thane is Research Professor in Contemporary History, Kings College, London. Her publications include: The Foundations of the Welfare State (1982), Old Age in England: Past Experiences, Present Issues (2000), Women and Ageing in British Society since 1500 (co-edited with Lynn Botelho, 2001), The Long History of Old Age (editor, 2005), Britain’s Pensions Crisis: History and Policy (co-edited with Hugh Pemberton and Noel Whiteside, 2006), Unequal Britain. Equalities in Britain since 1945 (editor, 2010), Women and Citizenship