Votes for Women Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Votes for Women - Essay Example He was in a very powerful position, as there was no Liberal MP who could even try to oppose him. It is well known that Asquith was totally against the campaign for women's vote right. Partly this was so because of the way he considered the voting: he did not think there was need for each individual to need to have a vote, he considered that such representation was more an issue of representing a class or community. That is why one man could represent the ideas of all of his family. Moreover, there were lots of serious problems facing the Parliament within 1900 - 1914, and Asquith was sure that "women's rights to vote" was a minor issue. In addition he paid no attention to demonstrations while he was sure that they did not reflect people's thinking. There was another aspect. If the law giving women the vote was ever going to be passed, it would have to happen in the Parliament. That means that such parties as the Liberals, the Conservatives and the Labour Party would have a part to play. It is false to think that all male politicians were opposed to female suffrage. In fact the Labour Party supported it, and leading Labour figures were deeply involved in the case. A substantial part of the Liberal Party supported it as well, together with many leading Liberals, including Churchill, Sir Edward Grey, and Lloyd George. Nevertheless there was much opposition to it among the Conservatives, as was vividly depicted in conservative Lord Curzon's speech in 1912. In society those who were against the female suffrage used a wide range of arguments, in 1900 many of the opponents to the movement simply considered that it was self evident that women were not intended to vote. To put it differently women should not have the vote because they simply were females. This was probably the position of most citizens in the country. It is worth mentioning that when people began to rationalise the opposition, occurred women who spoke out against female suffrage. The first group of people who opposed the movement were the people who considered the system to be fine and could not be improved further. Those people objected to giving anyone who was not already eligible to vote the right to do so. They had the vote right themselves, and feared any franchise extension. An elitist system of government and objection of widening the democracy was their major belief. As the debate over enlargement the pool of voters grew, arguments against women's suffrage began to occur. One of them was that all government, in England and in the Empire, rests on physical force, which women do not possess, or do not want to contribute to it because of their constitution. The idea is that women are too physically weak and it is not in their nature to be soldiers. The second aspect of the argument was that women influence would evidently help the introduction of pacifism into society. In relation to the Empire there were two further argument lines. One meant that if women got opportunity to gain power in Britain, a demand for the