Women and the Vote

cornubian · Women and the Vote

2008 is the 90th anniversary of the Representation of Peoples Act that gave some women the right to vote. It is also 80 years since women won the rights to vote on equal terms with men.

In 2008 a group of organisations has come together to create Woman and the Vote to mark these two monumental dates and to highlight the enormous disparity that still exists between women and men in UK politics.

The Electoral Reform Society has published this map and document which shows just 291 women have ever sat in the Commons; a mere 6 per cent of all those who have ever been elected to the House.

This is a call for all Celtic groups and political bodies in the Celtic nations to contact and support this campaign. Women are relatively well represented in various Cornish groups but there is still much room for improvement.

Is it conceivable that one or more Celtic organisations could run a parallel campaign? It's only going to look good to 50% of the population!

All links and addresses can be found here: http://thecornishdemocrat.blogspot.com/2008/02/women-in-politics.html

Dave Coull

Cornubian wrote "2008 is the 90th anniversary of the Representation of Peoples Act that gave some women the right to vote".

That is true. However, saying that it "gave some women the right to vote" actually underestimates the significance of the 1918 Act. It was the first Act to give most men the vote. Before 1918, the majority of working class men could not vote, because most of them lived in large family units ("The Broons" would have seemed quite normal back then), and the vote was confined to "heads of households" or "ratepayers". By 1918 this had become totally scandalous, because it meant that a million men who had fought for Britain in the First World War were denied the right to vote. My father was too young to vote in 1918, but let's consider his family as an example of a working class family. My dad had four brothers and one sister. All of them did in fact continue to live "at home" with their parents long after reaching adulthood. Before 1918, only my grandfather would have had the vote. The effect of the 1918 Act on such a family would have been that my grandmother got the vote (wife of a ratepayer), and so would four adult sons - only my aunt would have been unable to vote. In fact, the 1918 Act TRIPLED the UK electorate, from seven million to twenty one million. Having said that, my mother's family would mostly have had to wait until 1928 to vote. During the First World War, her only brother volunteered for the Royal Navy, which turned a blind eye to the fact that, legally, he was too young, and he was killed in action at the age of sixteen. That left three sisters, none of whom could have had the vote until the 1928 Act. And even the 1928 Act didn't give equal voting rights, because some people still had two votes, under the "university vote" and "business vote" systems.

By all means let's continue to campaign for equality. And by all means let's commemorate women getting the vote. But let's also commemorate working class men getting the vote at the same time.

cornubian

Dave Coull,

Who needs more equality today?

Dave Coull

Cornubian : "Who needs more equality today?"

Pass.

You sent a message about "2008 is the 90th anniversary of the Representation of Peoples Act that gave some women the right to vote". My point was, the very same Act gave most working class men the vote for the first time.