Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:07:58.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE BRITISH WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT AND THE PRACTICE OF PETITIONING, 1890–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2020

HENRY MILLER Open the ORCID record for HENRY MILLER [Opens in a new window]
HENRY MILLER*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
History, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, m13 9pl[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through an examination of the women's suffrage movement, this article reassesses the place of petitioning within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British political culture. While critical of their Victorian predecessors’ reliance on petitions, the Edwardian women's suffrage movement did not abandon petitioning, but reinvented it. Rather than presenting a polarized view of relations between suffragettes and suffragists, the article shows how both operated on a spectrum of direct action politics through petitioning. Militants and constitutionalists pioneered new, although different, modes of petitioning that underpinned broader repertoires of popular politics, adapting this venerable practice to a nascent mass democracy. The article then situates suffrage campaigners’ reinvention of petitioning within a broader political context. The apparent decline of petitioning, long noted by scholars, is reframed as the waning of the classic model of mass petitioning parliament associated with Victorian pressure groups. The early twentieth century was a crucial period for the reshaping of petitioning as a tool for political participation and expression through myriad subscriptional forms, rather than primarily through the medium of parliamentary petitions.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , March 2021 , pp. 332 - 356
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Richard Huzzey, Matt Johnson, Ludmilla Jordanova, David Minto, Kathryn Rix, Sarah Richardson, Kevin Waite, and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts, and also the audience of the inaugural Durham–Münster conference, held in Durham, November 2018, for their feedback on this article. This research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016-097).

References

1 E.g. Leneman, L., A guid cause: the women's suffrage movement in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1995), pp. 12, 39Google Scholar; Auchterlonie, M., Conservative suffragists: the women's vote and the Tory party (London, 2007), pp. 162–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holton, S. S., Feminism and democracy: women's suffrage and reform politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 33, 44, 60Google Scholar; idem, Suffrage days: stories from the women's suffrage movement (London, 1996), pp. 20, 23, 100, 144, 170; Purvis, J., Emmeline Pankhurst: a biography (London, 2003), pp. 79, 103, 122, 129–31, 190, 229CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Christabel Pankhurst: a biography (London, 2018), p. 151; Liddington, J., Vanishing for the vote: suffrage, citizenship and the battle for the census (Manchester, 2014), pp. 34, 53, 205Google Scholar.

2 Mason, B., Story of the women's suffrage movement (London, 1912), pp. 22, 31–4Google Scholar; S. Pankhurst, ‘The history of the suffrage movement’, Votes for Women, Nov. 1907, p. 24, Dec. 1907, p. 41.

3 A. Dingsdale, ‘“Generous and lofty sympathies”: the Kensington Society, the 1866 women's suffrage petition, and the development of mid-Victorian feminism’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Greenwich, 1995), pp. 90–205; Richardson, S., The political worlds of women: gender and politics in nineteenth-century Britain (London, 2013), pp. 109–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gleadle, K., Borderline citizens: women, gender and political culture in Britain, 1815–1867 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 42–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Data from Select Committee on Public Petitions, Reports (1866–90).

5 Suffrage speeches from the dock (London, 1912), p. 28.

6 Common Cause (CC), 8 July 1909, p. 163.

7 Pugh, M., The march of the women: a revisionist analysis of the campaign for women's suffrage, 1866–1914 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

8 Leneman, A guid cause, pp. 218–19; Purvis, J. and Holton, S. S., ‘Introduction: the campaigns for votes for women’, in Purvis, J. and Holton, S. S., eds., Votes for women (London, 2000), p. 2Google Scholar; S. Holton, ‘The making of suffrage history’, in ibid., pp. 13–23.

9 Vickery, A., ‘Introduction’, in Vickery, A., ed., Women, privilege and power: British politics, 1750 to the present (Stanford, CA, 2001), pp. 1–55Google Scholar, at p. 2; Liddington, J., Rebel girls: their fight for the vote (London, 2006), p. 264Google Scholar.

10 Pugh, March of the women, pp. 171–223; Bearman, C. J., ‘An examination of suffragette violence’, English Historical Review, 120 (2005), pp. 365–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Eustance, C., ‘Meanings of militancy: the ideas and practice of militancy in the Women's Freedom League, 1907–1914’, in Purvis, J. and Joannou, M., eds., The women's suffrage movement: new feminist perspectives (Manchester, 1998), pp. 51–64Google Scholar; Mayhall, L., ‘Defining militancy: radical protest, the constitutional idiom, and women's suffrage in Britain, 1908–1909’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), pp. 340–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The militant suffrage movement: citizenship and resistance in Britain, 1860–1930 (Oxford, 2003).

12 Holton, S. S., ‘Manliness and militancy: the political protest of male suffragists and the gendering of “suffragette” identity’, in John, A. V. and Eustance, C., eds., The men's share: masculinities, male support and women's suffrage in Britain, 1890–1920 (London, 1997), pp. 110, 129Google Scholar.

13 Cowman, K., Women of the right spirit: paid organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), 1904–1918 (Manchester, 2007), p. 120Google Scholar.

14 CC, 1 July 1909, p. 155.

15 Leys, C., ‘Petitioning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, Political Studies, 3 (1955), pp. 45–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hawkins, A., Victorian political culture: ‘habits of heart and mind’ (Oxford, 2015), p. 270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Pickering, P., ‘“And your petitioners, &c”: Chartist petitioning in popular politics, 1838–1848’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), pp. 368–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Poole, R., ‘French Revolution or Peasants’ Revolt?: petitioners and rebels in England from the Blanketeers to the Chartists’, Labour History Review, 74 (2009), pp. 6–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, H., ‘Popular petitioning and the corn laws, 1833–1846’, English Historical Review, 127 (2012), pp. 882–919CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oldfield, J., Popular politics and British anti-slavery: the mobilization of public opinion against the slave trade, 1787–1807 (Manchester, 1995), pp. 96–119Google Scholar.

17 Miller, H., ‘“Petition! petition!! petition!!!”: petitioning and political organization in Britain, c. 1800–1850’, in Velde, H. te and Janse, M., eds., Organizing democracy: reflections on the rise of political organizations in the nineteenth century (Basingstoke, 2017), pp. 43–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 R. Huzzey and H. Miller, ‘Petitions, parliament and political culture: petitioning the House of Commons, 1780–1918’, Past & Present (forthcoming 2020).

19 J. Rendall, ‘John Stuart Mill, liberal politics and the movements for women's suffrage, 1865–1873’, in Vickery, ed., Women, privilege and power, pp. 168–200, at pp. 182–8.

20 Emily Davies to Helen Taylor, 18 July 1866, qu. in Murphy, A. B. and Raftery, D., eds., Emily Davies: collected letters, 1861–1875 (Charlottesville, VA, 2004), p. 182Google Scholar.

21 Select Committee on Public Petitions (SCPP), Reports (1867–85).

22 Pugh, March of the women, pp. 14–23.

23 Fraser, P., ‘The growth of ministerial control in the nineteenth-century House of Commons’, English Historical Review, 75 (1960), pp. 444–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, G., The efficient secret: the cabinet and the development of political parties in Victorian England (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 SCPP, Reports (1890), p. 148, and appendix 115.

25 Votes for Women, 16 July 1909, p. 940.

26 Ibid., 25 June 1908, p. 264.

27 Josephine Butler to Lydia Becker, Feb. 1879, Archives+, Manchester Central Library (MCL), M50/1/10/167.

28 CC, 8 July 1909, p. 163.

29 Sir May, T. E., The constitutional history of England since the accession of George III, 1760–1860 (3rd edn, 3 vols., London, 1871), ii, p. 68Google Scholar.

30 The bill proposed increasing liquor duties to fund the purchase of licences as a means to reduce the number of premises selling alcohol. It was therefore a proxy for the debate over temperance.

31 House of Commons Debates, 26 June 1890, 3rd series, vol. 346, c. 37; Manchester Guardian (MG), 27 June 1890, p. 8.

32 Courtney, L., The working constitution of the United Kingdom and its outgrowths (London, 1901), p. 175Google Scholar; Blackburn, H., Women's suffrage: a record of the women's suffrage movement in the British Isles (London, 1902), p. 198Google Scholar; Redlich, J., The procedure of the House of Commons, trans. Steinthal, A. E. (3 vols., London, 1908), ii, p. 239Google Scholar.

33 Porritt, E., The Englishman at home (London, [c. 1893]), p. 189Google Scholar.

34 Alliance News, 20 Oct. 1893, p. 703.

35 Zaeske, S., Signatures of citizenship: petitioning, antislavery and women's political identity (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003)Google Scholar; Carpenter, D., ‘Recruitment by petition: American antislavery, French Protestantism, English suppression’, Perspectives on Politics, 14 (2016), pp. 700–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, H., ‘Introduction: the transformation of petitioning in the long nineteenth century (1780–1914)’, Social Science History, 43 (2019), pp. 409–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. H. Voss, ed., Petitions in social history, supplement 9, International Review of Social History, 46 (2001).

36 Holton, ‘Suffrage history’, pp. 22–6.

37 Carpenter, D., Popp, Z., Resch, T., Schneer, B., and Topich, N., ‘Suffrage petitioning as formative practice: American women presage and prepare for the vote, 1840–1940’, Studies in American Political Development, 32 (2018), pp. 24–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 29; Carpenter, D. and Moore, C. D., ‘When canvassers became activists: antislavery petitioning and the political mobilization of American women’, American Political Science Review, 108 (2014), pp. 479–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’.

39 S. Pankhurst, The suffragette: the history of the women's militant suffrage movement, 1905–1910 (New York, NY, 1911), p. 473.

40 E. Pankhurst, My own story (London, 1914), p. 148.

41 Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’, pp. 349, 351.

42 The Women's Library, London School of Economics (TWL, LSE), 7AMP/G/05, Archive badge box 3.

43 Poole, R., ‘Petitioners and rebels: petitioning for parliamentary reform in Regency Britain’, Social Science History, 43 (2019), pp. 553–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 J. Purvis, ‘“Deeds, not words”: daily life in the Women's Social and Political Union in Edwardian Britain’, in Purvis and Holton, eds., Votes for women, pp. 135–58, at pp. 136–7.

45 Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’, pp. 360–5; Rosen, A., Rise up, women!: the militant campaign of the Women's Social and Political Union, 1903–1914 (London, 1974), pp. 118–20Google Scholar.

46 Votes for Women, 16 July 1909, pp. 935–42, 3 Dec. 1909, pp. 147–9.

47 Tickner, L., The spectacle of women: imagery of the suffrage campaign, 1907–1914 (Chicago, IL, 1988), pp. 58–147Google Scholar; Thompson, J., ‘“Pictorial lies?” – posters and politics in Britain, c. 1880–1914’, Past & Present, 197 (2007), pp. 177–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘“The lights of the electric octopus have been switched off”: visual and political culture in Edwardian London’, Twentieth Century British History, 29 (2018), pp. 331–56; A. Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, A. Hutton, and P. Readman, ‘The Grand Empire Pageant, 1909’, The Redress of the Past, www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1075/, accessed 24 May 2018; Trentmann, F., Free trade nation: commerce, consumption and civil society in modern Britain (Oxford, 2008), pp. 122–30Google Scholar.

48 Tickner, Spectacle of women, pp. 58–9.

49 Green, B., ‘From visible flâneuse to spectacular suffragette?: the prison, the street, and the sites of suffrage’, Discourse, 17 (1994–5), pp. 67–97Google Scholar, at p. 69.

50 Manchester Courier, 10 July 1910, p. 11; ‘Votes for Women. Mrs. Despard and Mrs. Cobden Sanderson. Waiting for Mr. Asquith’, WFL postcard, 19 Aug. 1909, National Portrait Gallery, London, x45197.

51 Vicinus, M., Independent women: work and community for single women, 1850–1920 (Chicago, IL, 1985), p. 264Google Scholar.

52 J. Lawrence, ‘Contesting the male polity: the suffragettes and the politics of disruption in Edwardian Britain’, in Vickery, ed., Women, privilege and power, pp. 203, 209–10.

53 Rosen, Rise up women!, pp. 138–42.

54 Mayhall, ‘Defining militancy’, pp. 353–7.

55 MG, 16 July 1909, p. 8.

56 MG, 9 July 1909, p. 8, 16 July 1909, p. 8.

57 MG, 6 Aug. 1909, p. 8.

58 Charles W. Matthew to Sir Edward Troup, 22 Aug. 1913, The National Archives, HO 45/24650.

59 CC, 13 Jan. 1910, p. 538.

60 CC, 21 Oct. 1909, p. 350, 23 Dec. 1909, p. 493; MG, 15 June 1910, p. 3.

61 ‘An appeal against female suffrage’, Nineteenth Century, 25 (1889), pp. 781–8; ‘Women's suffrage: a reply’, Fortnightly Review, 46 (1889), pp. 123–39.

62 Women's suffrage deputation (London, [1906]), p. 11.

63 Liddington, J. and Norris, J., One hand tied behind us: the rise of the women's suffrage movement (London, 2000), pp. 143–53Google Scholar.

64 Blackburn, Women's suffrage, p. 198; Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage, Annual report (1894), p. 5, Archives+, MCL, M50/1/4/24.

65 Blackburn, Women's suffrage, pp. 200–1.

66 Holton, Suffrage days, pp. 70–90, 100.

67 NUWSS, Annual report, 1906 (London, 1907), pp. 14–15, Archives+, MCL, M50/1/4/39.

68 Times, 11 Apr. 1907, p. 15.

69 Hume, L., The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, 1897–1914 (New York, NY, 1982), pp. 62–3Google Scholar; Liddington, Rebel girls, p. 224; Holton, Suffrage days, p. 170; Tickner, Spectacle of women, p. 109.

70 Blewett, N., The peers, the parties and the people: the general elections of 1910 (London, 1972), p. 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 CC, 27 Jan. 1910, p. 51.

72 Hume, National Union, p. 55.

73 CC, 19 Aug. 1909, pp. 239–40.

74 CC, 18 Nov. 1909, p. 420.

75 C. Marshall, ‘To Cumberland suffragists’, circular, [1909], Carlisle Archives Centre (CAC), D Mar 3/1.

76 CC, 7 Oct. 1909, p. 326; Parliamentary Papers 1908 (87), Return of parliamentary electors in each constituency, lxxxvii, p. 885; PP 1909 (70), Return of electors in parliamentary constituencies, lxx, pp. 476–88.

77 CC, 16 Dec. 1909, p. 483.

78 Bogdanor, V., The people and the party system: the referendum and electoral reform in British politics (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 11–33Google Scholar; Manton, K., ‘British unionism, the constitution and the referendum, c. 1907–1914’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), pp. 505–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 CC, 23 Dec. 1909, p. 498.

80 NUWSS, Annual report, 1909 (London, 1910), pp. 25–6, Archives+, MCL, M50/1/6/4.

81 CC, 16 Dec. 1909, p. 481.

82 Trentmann, Free trade nation, pp. 116–21; CC, 13 Jan. 1910, p. 544.

83 CC, 16 Dec. 1909, p. 485, 13 Jan. 1910, p. 544.

84 CC, 25 Nov. 1909, p. 437; Philippa Strachey, printed circular, 11 Feb. 1910, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/1/2, box FL 338/1. For documents in The Women's Library, I have given the catalogue and box number.

85 CC, 20 Jan. 1910, p. 561.

86 ‘London election’, memo., TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/9/1, FL 369/1.

87 Alice L. Head to Philippa Strachey, 18 Jan. 1910, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/8, FL 151.

88 F. Nelson Pringle to Strachey, 12 Dec. 1909, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/9, FL 292/3.

89 CC, 20 Jan. 1910, p. 561.

90 CC, 27 Jan. 1910, p. 575, 3 Feb. 1910, p. 594; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 14 Feb. 1910, p. 5.

91 CC, 20 Jan. 1910, p. 562.

92 ‘London election’, memo., TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/9/1, FL 369/1.

93 C. Johnson to Miss Ward, 31 Jan. 1910, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/04, FL 154/12.

94 NUWSS, Annual report, 1909 (London, 1910), pp. 25–6, Archives+, MCL, M50/1/6/4; SCPP, Reports (1910), p. 71.

95 General election, Jan. 1910, petitions of voters organized by the London Society, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/3/5, FL 153.

96 CC, 24 Feb. 1910, p. 659.

97 CC, 3 Feb. 1910, p. 597.

98 See John and Eustance, eds., The men's share.

99 In the remainder, the division of a city or county was not given so it was impossible to match the petition to a constituency.

100 MG, 16 Feb. 1910, p. 12.

101 ‘The story of the electors’ petition of 1910’, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/9/1, FL 369/1.

102 CC, 3 Feb. 1910, p. 588; Bolton Women's Suffrage Association, Second annual report (1910), p. 6, Bolton Archives, FW/2/4; MG, 29 Jan. 1910, p. 9.

103 C. Marshall, draft letter to Cumberland and Westmorland MPs, 6 June 1910, CAC, D Mar 3/2.

104 ‘London election’, memo., TWL, LSE, 2LSW/C/9/1, FL 369/1. See also Jessie W. Granger Evans to Strachey, n.d. [c. Jan. 1910], TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/17, FL 291/1.

105 CC, 20 Jan. 1910, p. 561.

106 MG, 29 Jan. 1910, p. 9.

107 CC, 7 Apr. 1910, p. 735.

108 CC, 3 Mar. 1910, p. 663.

109 Eleanor Rathbone to Strachey, 10 Mar. 1910, TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/9, box FL 292/2.

110 Minutes of provincial council meeting, 8 Oct. 1910, CAC, D Mar 3/10; Harrison, B., Separate spheres: the opposition to women's suffrage in Britain (New York, NY, 1978), pp. 118, 120, 154–6Google Scholar.

111 Holton, Feminism and democracy, p. 50.

112 Pankhurst, The suffragette, p. 473.

113 Votes for Women, 10 Dec. 1909, p. 168.

114 Catherine Marshall, circular to North West Federation of the NUWSS, 9 May 1912, CAC, D Mar 3/4; ‘Suggestions for deputations to MPs’, printed circular (n.d. [1912]), TWL, LSE, 2LSW/E/1/2, FL 338/1; secretary's report for half year ending 30 June 1911, in WSPU, Rochdale branch, minute book, Working-Class Movement Library, suffragette box 2.

115 NUWSS, Annual report, 1913 (London, 1914), p. 28, Archives+, MCL, M50/1/6/8.

116 MG, 12 Mar. 1913, 9 Mar. 1914; Pankhurst, My own story, pp. 334–8; Purvis, Christabel Pankhurst, p. 245.

117 D. Walford to Miss Bloxham, 23 June 1917, TWL, 2LSW/C/9, FL 294/1.

118 Law, C., Suffrage and power: the women's movement, 1918–1928 (London, 1997), p. 33Google Scholar.

119 Vellacott, J., Pacifists, patriots and the vote: the erosion of democratic suffragism in Britain during the First World War (Basingstoke, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gullace, N., ‘The blood of our sons’: men, women and the renegotiation of citizenship during the Great War (New York, NY, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120 Holton, Feminism and democracy, p. 132.

121 The Vote, 31 Dec. 1920, p. 318; Law, Suffrage and power, p. 191.

122 Scotsman, 8 Feb. 1828, p. 8.

123 CC, 17 July 1925, p. 198, 4 Feb. 1927, p. 463.

124 Thane, P., ‘Women and political participation in England, 1918–1970’, in Breitenbach, E. and Thane, P., eds., Women and citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century: what difference did the vote make? (London, 2010), p. 22Google Scholar.

125 ‘Verax’ [Henry Dunkley], MG, 25 Apr. 1893, p. 9.

126 Thompson, J., British political culture and the idea of ‘public opinion’, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, 2013), p. 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Huzzey and Miller, ‘Petitions, parliament and political culture’.

128 Lawrence, J., Speaking for the people: party, language, and popular politics, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Electing our masters: the hustings in British politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford, 2009), chs. 2–3; Thackeray, D., Conservatism for the democratic age: Conservative cultures and the challenge of mass politics in early twentieth-century England (Manchester, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rix, K., Parties, agents and electoral culture in England, 1880–1910 (Woodbridge, 2016)Google Scholar; Blaxill, L., ‘The language of imperialism in British electoral politics, 1880–1910’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 45 (2017), pp. 416–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Joseph Chamberlain and the Third Reform Act: a reassessment of the “Unauthorized Programme” of 1885’, Journal of British Studies, 54 (2015), pp. 88–117; Trentmann, Free trade nation; Biagini, E., British democracy and Irish nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Readman, P., Land and nation in England: patriotism, national identity and the politics of land, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge, 2008)Google Scholar.

129 National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage, Manchester branch, Archives+, MCL, M131/5.

130 Leys, ‘Petitioning’; Huzzey and Miller, ‘Petitions, parliament and political culture’. 63.2 per cent of Britons surveyed by the European values survey (1981) had signed a petition; the British election survey (1987) and Eurobarometer survey (1989) reveal similar figures (73.4 per cent and 69 per cent). Data from the Centre for Comparative European Survey Data Information Systems, www.ccesd.ac.uk, accessed 8 Oct. 2018. See also Judge, D., ‘Public petitions and the House of Commons’, Parliamentary Affairs, 31 (1978), pp. 402–4Google Scholar.

131 MG, 26 Aug. 1909, p. 3.

132 MG, 5 Mar. 1914, p. 5.

133 MG, 26 Sept. 1905, p. 12, 3 Oct. 1912, p. 6; Lichfield Mercury, 19 May 1911, p. 3.

134 ‘Preliminary arrangements for Ulster day’, handbill, 1912, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), D1327/18A/4.

135 J. Lizars to R. Dawson Bates, 10 Oct. 1912, N. Hobart to R. Dawson Bates, 3 Oct. 1912, PRONI, D1327/18A/4.

136 C. Falls to R. Dawson Bates, 16 Dec. 1912, PRONI, D1327/18A/4.

137 ‘Statement with reference to the Carson fund’, 28 Mar. 1913; draft circular regarding Carson fund [n.d.], PRONI, Ulster Women's Unionist Council, minute book, PRONI, D1098/1/1.

138 R. Huzzey and H. Miller, ‘The politics of petitioning: parliament, government and subscriptional cultures, 1780–1918’, History (forthcoming).

139 MG, 12 May 1914, p. 10.

140 Thackeray, Conservatism, pp. 74–7.

141 See Weston, C. C., The House of Lords and ideological politics: Lord Salisbury's referendal theory and the Conservative party, 1846–1922 (Philadelphia, PA, 1995)Google Scholar.

142 Krotoszynski, R. Jr, Reclaiming the petition clause: seditious libel, ‘offensive’ protest and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances (Yale, CT, 2012), pp. 129–34Google Scholar.

143 Carpenter, Popp, Resch, Schneer, and Topich, ‘Suffrage petitioning’.

144 Holton, Suffrage days, pp. 205–6; Holton, Feminism and democracy, pp. 76–115; Pugh, March of the women, pp. 253–83; Hume, National Union, pp. 193–209.

145 E.g. A. Andreou, ‘I only subscribe to this: no more pointless e-petitions’, Guardian, 30 Dec. 2014.

146 Carpenter, ‘Recruitment by petition’, p. 716.