You might think that the only significant event in the path to universal suffrage was the enfranchisement of women in 1918. Indeed, many people I have spoken to believe that men had enjoyed the vote for hundreds of years before women. Another common belief is that universal suffrage came about because of the activities of the suffragettes, who are now deemed secular saints. As always, life is more complicated than feminist ‘just so’ stories would suggest.
Historically, the vote was linked to land ownership and if you owned enough of it you could have more than one vote. To this day, in the UK, land ownership still brings with it disproportionate power and influence and it would be a mistake to believe that our quest towards being an optimal and thriving democracy is over. Our almost exclusive fixation with the enfranchisement of women in in 1918, important though it was, blinds us to this problem.
Before the first Reform Act in 1832, approximately one man in ten had the right to vote. In 1867, the amount of property you needed to qualify was reduced by second Reform Act and 4 in 10 men were able to vote. In 1918 all men, regardless of property ownership, were given the right to vote along with women over 28. This later voting age for women is often cited as evidence of discrimination. It was nothing of the sort, when the 1918 Representation of the People Act was passing through Parliament the First World War was still in progress. About 750,000 UK servicemen had been killed and a similar number were on active service and were not available to vote. The age difference in voting was to ensure roughly equal numbers of male and female voters. In the modern parlance of progressives, this was about equity.
That is not to say the slower implantation of voting rights for women wasn’t an outrage, but it was not the only story. The dominant battle was between the haves and have-nots and most of the heavy lifting in that battle was done by men who, in the most part, have been erased from history in feminist narratives. Take, for example, Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey who has a statue in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne. He pushed through parliament, in the teeth of strong opposition, the first reform act in 1932. Although this didn’t have the impact of the later reform acts of 1867 and 1884 it was the first crack in the dam holding back universal suffrage.
The role of the Suffragettes has also been overplayed. They believed in votes for ‘respectable’ women alone, in other words, a continuation of the old order with the addition of wealthy women. As I have noted elsewhere, even by the standards of their time, the Pankhursts were virulently reactionary, right-wing snobs. They believed that men owed it to women to fight in WW1 while arguing against against the right of about half of those men to vote. Meanwhile, the labour movement, a growing force in the land, and the National Union of Miners were campaigning for universal suffrage. Had the suffragettes got their way before WW1, left leaning political parties would have been locked out of power indefinitely. A likely end result would have been a revolution along the lines of what happened in Russia in 2017.
So what was the catalyst that brought about Universal Suffrage? That brings us back to World War One. About half the men who fought in the trenches didn’t have the vote on the Government that sent them there. Not only that, none of the women who worked in perilous conditions in munitions factories could vote either. After the contribution made by men and women in the first ‘total war’ in which all strata of society were involved in some way, citizens had to be granted the vote irrespective of sex or socio-economic status. Also, the aristocratic classes were looking over their shoulder to events in Russia; there was a real fear that the contagion from Russia could spread to other parts of Europe, unless the populace was given a greater stake in the country.
So as William Collins put in his blog, to concentrate on the contribution made by the Suffragettes is to start half way though the final chapter and even then, to give a highly partial and misleading account.
I am not just taking a pop at feminist-populism. The narrow minded approach to our journey towards universal suffrage can blind us to ongoing problems with our democracy. The powers of landowners were enshrined in law at a time when only landowners could vote. The legal status of leaseholders was created as well and was intended only for tenant farmers but they are still are able to extend these undemocratic and feudal forms of tenure to the occupiers of urban flats – about 4.8 million dwellings in the UK. Unelected landowners have been able to block and distort reforms that have passed through our elected chamber. For example, the Labour Party committed to ending leasehold and replace it with commonhold in 1995. The legislation that passed through Parliament was reasonable. However, landowners, without the bill going back to an elected chamber, were able to so modify and fillet this legislation that it was no longer fit for purpose. Land ownership still confers great political power.
Leasehold is a hobbyhorse of mine, but there are similar structural problems afflicting other areas of our democracy. And that is the trouble with ‘woke’ of which toxic-feminism is a subset. Structural power cleaves along identitarian lines (such as patriarchy) to only a limited extent and that fixation with identity group disparities blinds to more glaring power imbalances in our democracy. Not only is ‘woke’ an enabling creed for affluent graduates, it ignores more important disparities and poses no threat to those who really use and abuse power.
It is no accident that the Housing Association that mismanages my block, while clinging to an and outdated and feudal form of tenure is bedecked with the symbols of ‘social justice’ Pride flags are everywhere in the foyer, they tweet about international women’s day and trans rights, but they never tweet about building things properly and treating their tenants in a fair manner.
Our journey to becoming a modern social democracy is not over. Feminists, obsessing over narrowly framed historic grievances, have nothing useful to say on the matter.
toxic feminism 