SUFFRAGISM AND THE GREAT WAR

Auxiliary Nurse Vera Brittain serving with the Red Cross in France remembered being 'completely unaware that...the Representation of the People Bill, which gave votes to women over the age of 30, had been passed by the House of Lords.' For Vera, 'the spectacular pageant of the Woman's Movement' had 'crept to its quiet, unadvertised triumph in the deepest night of wartime depression'. The struggle for women's parliamentary enfranchisement had been long and bitter, and those known as the 'Suffragettes' had fought for the vote through militant and at times violent campaigns, imprisoned, undertaken hunger and thirst strikes and suffered the torture of forcible feeding. Non militant suffragists had used legal and passive resistance in a movement that was not premeditated or controllable, 'it just happened'. Now we join Dr Vivien Newman, arm in arm, with some of the most formidable women who turned their considerable skills, honed over 50 years of active campaigning, to both support the war and the pursuit of peace. An explanation of the acronyms includes the Actress' Franchise League, Conchies, East London Federation, International Women's Suffrage Alliance, Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage, National Vigilance Association, Passmore Edwards Settlement, Queen Mary's Auxiliary Army Corps, Society for Overseas Settlement of British Women, Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, The Tax Resistance League, The Women's Volunteers Reserve and many more. 158pp, archive photos.