Seminar Studies In History
2 total works
This is the first book to trace the British women's suffrage campaign from its origins in the 1860s through to the achievement of equal suffrage in 1928. It provides an up-to-date synthesis of the most recent scholarship and contains new material on the 1920s suffrage campaign, based on the author's own research. Unlike most studies it pays equal attention to the period after 1914 when suffrage legislation was actually obtained and it views the campaign within the broader political context.
This Seminar Study was the first book to trace the British women's suffrage campaign from its origins in the 1860s through to the achievement of equal suffrage in 1928. In this second edition, Smith provides new evidence drawn from the author's research on how the main post-1918 women's organisation (the NUSEC) worked with Conservative Party women to persuade the Conservative Party to endorse equal franchise rights. Smith focuses on the actions of reformers and their opponents, with due attention paid to the campaigns in Scotland and Wales as well as the movements in England. He explores why women's suffrage was such a contentious issue, and how women gained the vote despite opponents' fears that it would undermine gender boundaries. Suitable for students studying the Suffrage Movement, modern British history and the history of gender.