The 2018 centenary of some women winning the vote in the United Kingdom saw a number of processions and parades, with marchers dressed in the purple, green, and white of the Women's Social and Political Union, flooding the streets of Britain as women had done a hundred years before. As Nicoletta Gullace points out in her afterword to The Politics of Women's Suffrage: Local, National and International Dimensions, however, these triumphal celebrations did little to represent the complexities of the women's suffrage movement, with its numerous schisms, sometimes dictatorial personalities, and tensions between regional and national bodies. Gullace is right that this volume, derived from thirteen papers presented at a 2018 conference on women's suffrage, offers a timely corrective to that uncomplicated narrative.
Recentering politics in the discussion of women's suffrage is at the heart of the analytical framework proposed by the volume's editors, Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins. In their introduction, they argue persuasively that the campaign for women's suffrage was about more than just granting women the vote. Rather, its leaders sought “lasting structural change by navigating, interrogating, accepting, challenging, and remaking the existing political system” (3). Much recent scholarship on the suffrage movement has been focused on the campaign's social and cultural elements. Though such work is important, it can sometimes obscure the desire for real structural change that drove suffrage campaigners. Organized into three sections examining the ways women worked within existing political structures, how advocates advanced political demands via cultural and social methods, and the ways women navigated international political structures, the volume largely succeeds in its goal of “indicat[ing] the multiplicity of perspectives among women activists . . . and the different priorities which women brought to the cause” (7).
Though most of the essays are focused on the heyday of the movement in the early twentieth century, Jennifer Redmond's chapter on petitions in nineteenth century Ireland and Maurice J. Casey's essay on the appeal—or lack thereof—of communism following women's enfranchisement extend the chronology. Chapters by Jenkins and Anna Muggeridge focus on working-class women, demonstrating that many women thought of the vote as just one piece of bringing about long-term political and social reform. Reform movements also feature in Katherine Connelly and Karen Hunt's chapters, which highlight the diverse ways in which the British campaign drew inspiration from similar work in other countries.
Reflecting the volume's concern with the political, a number of chapters call for expanding how we understand political engagement and advocacy. Helen Sunderland contends we must take seriously the political activism and awareness of children and young adults. Though it might look different from adult activism, she argues, the girls’ school offered young women a space to engage with the suffrage debate. Sharon Crozier-De Rosa argues similarly that we must consider the role of emotions in politics. A real standout of the volume, her chapter moves the reader beyond the “reason-versus-emotion dualism” that characterizes so much scholarship on popular political protest in favor of recognizing that emotions serve “as a means of motivating, sustaining or even bringing about the demise of political movements” (313). She suggests both pro- and anti-suffrage arguments were driven by emotions like shame and pride and, moreover, that those emotions were often dictated by understandings of and perceived challenges to one's place within the British Empire. Crozier-De Rosa's innovative methodological approach to political history offers new insights on imperial suffrage politics and the ways imperial ideologies shaped participation in the suffrage movement.
Also emphasizing the importance of one's place in Britain is Beth Jenkins, whose chapter on grassroots organizing in Wales reveals how local politics and customs shaped national policy. Though Wales had a reputation as apathetic toward women's suffrage, Jenkins argues persuasively that the true story is more nuanced. Wales presented a distinct “national context,” whose “subtle complexities could pose significant challenges” for suffrage organizers unfamiliar with the particular socioeconomic, political, and nationalist concerns of the Welsh people (91). National suffrage societies found the most success when they took the time to recruit organizers who spoke Welsh and who recognized the importance Welsh people placed on their national and cultural identities, which were deeply entwined with the Liberal party. Thus, interactions between suffrage organizers and Welsh communities could sometimes lead to “fruitful exchanges which transformed the tactics and agendas of outside campaigners” (107). With her chapter, Jenkins contributes to a growing movement in feminist geography and history to identify the ways places shape how people experience political movements and, equally excitingly, demonstrates how those movements are shaped by place.
Rounding out the book are chapters on newspapers and art by Sarah Pedersen and Sos Eltis and essays by Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Tania Shew that posit new ways of thinking about suffrage militancy. This volume does much to recenter the political in our discussion of suffrage. Throughout, the authors highlight sources that allow them to approach the suffrage debate from new angles, though they do not always reach fundamentally new or different conclusions than the bulk of existing scholarship. The work is most interesting when analyzing the political aspects of the suffrage debate through nonpolitical methodologies, as in Crozier-De Rosa's chapter on the place of emotions or Sunderland's essay on the possibility of children's political activism.
In her foreword to the volume, Susan Grayzel suggests that a lack of access to the political sphere often serves as a means of uniting women in pursuit of citizenship rights, just one of which is the vote. Indeed, embedded into the editors’ approach is the idea that “suffrage was inseparable from other claims around women's rights” (6). This argument feels especially potent given today's global political climate and recent threats to women's bodily autonomy around the world. Recentering the political in our discussions of historical reform movements, suffrage included, can reshape how we understand the global pursuit of women's equality today. This volume offers an ideal jumping off point for that research and demonstrates admirably that suffrage history, political or otherwise, is still relevant and necessary.
