The Actresses' Franchise League was a women's suffrage organisation, mainly active in England.
The Actresses' Franchise League was a women's suffrage organisation, mainly active in England.
In 1908 the Actresses' Franchise League was founded by Gertrude Elliott, Adeline Bourne, Winifred Mayo and Sime Seruya at a meeting in the Criterion Restaurant in London. [1] [2] While "actresses" are specified in the organisation's name, any woman who was or had been in the theatrical profession was welcome to join. British actresses who joined included Sybil Thorndike, Italia Conti, Inez Bensusan, Madge Kendal, Gertrude Elliott, Ellen Terry, Lillah McCarthy, Decima Moore, Cicely Hamilton, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale, Christabel Marshall, Lena Ashwell, Edith Craig, Janette Steer, Ellison Scotland Gibb and Lillie Langtry.
The group had three main objectives:
1. To convince members of the Theatrical profession of the necessity of extending the franchise to women.
2. To work for Votes for Women on the same terms as they are, or may be, granted to men by educational methods.
3. To assist all other leagues whenever possible.
The League itself was strictly neutral in regard to suffrage tactics meaning the organisation did not either publicly endorse or condemn militancy. However, there were some members who were also a part of militant societies such the Women's Freedom League and Women’s Social and Political Union, and who were arrested and imprisoned for militant actions. By 1913 the AFL membership had reached 900 members, and there was an affiliated men's group as well as over 100 patrons.
The AFL adopted pink and green as its colours. [3]
The first meeting of the AFL was held on 26 November 1908. and chaired by the actor–manager Johnston Forbes-Robertson. The first president of the league was Dame Madge Kendal. [4]
The AFL had very specific means of accomplishing their goals. These were delineated in its first annual report as:
i) Propaganda Meetings,
ii) Sale of Literature,
iii) Propaganda Plays,
iv) Lectures.
Literature, including plays and sketches by pro-suffrage writers, was sold at all AFL events. The AFL often collaborated with other suffrage groups, particularly the Women Writers' Suffrage League. [2] Writers and dramatists in this group, like Cicely Hamilton, provided many of the plays and skits performed by the AFL. The two groups shared many of the same members. The AFL performed at WSPU’s Women’s Suffrage Exhibition in 1909 and then at WSPU’s Christmas Fair and Festival in 1911.
The AFL set up offices at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi, near Charing Cross Station, and had branches across Britain in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Eastbourne. [4] Representative of the AFL were present at all major events in the British suffrage campaign between 1909 and 1928. [4] Between 1909 and 1914, at least 120 suffrage plays were performed across the country. [4]
The AFL was active for over 50 years, well after the partial granting of women's suffrage in 1918 and of equal suffrage in 1928. Early in the Second World War, the AFL began war work, holding events to support theatrical charities and formed the Women’s Adjustment Board, to help find employment for women during wartime. Representatives of the AFL and WAB sat on the advisory council of the Equal Pay Campaign Committee in the 1940s and 1950s and other members worked to raise funds for residential homes for both elderly women and men. The last event held by AFL was a ball at the Savoy Hotel in December 1958 to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary. [4]
By 1914 membership of the AFL numbered over 900 and a linked men’s group had been formed. The AFL recruited over 100 patrons from outside the theatre professions, including Christabel Pankhurst. [4]
The organisation remained in existence until at least 1934. [2]
Papers of the Actresses' Franchise League are held in the Women's Library in London at LSE. [5] The Museum of London has a large banner of the AFL in its collection. [6] Many of the plays created for the AFL to perform have been reprinted since the 1980s, most recently by Dr Naomi Paxton in two anthologies with Methuen Drama in 2013 and 2018 [7]
From October 2018 to January 2019 there was an exhibition at the National Theatre in London about the Actresses' Franchise League and Women Writers' Suffrage League. It was called "Dramatic Progress: Votes for Women and the Edwardian Stage". [8]
Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett was an English politician, writer and feminist. She campaigned for women's suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain's largest women's rights association, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), explaining, "I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government." She tried to broaden women's chances of higher education, as a governor of Bedford College, London and co-founding Newnham College, Cambridge in 1875. In 2018, a century after the Representation of the People Act, she was the first woman honoured by a statue in Parliament Square.
Emmeline Pankhurst was an English political activist. She is best remembered for organising the UK suffragette movement and helping women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst, was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed its militant actions from exile in France from 1912 to 1913. In 1914, she supported the war against Germany. After the war, she moved to the United States, where she worked as an evangelist for the Second Adventist movement.
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia; Sylvia was eventually expelled.
Cicely Mary Hamilton, was an English actress, writer, journalist, suffragist and feminist, part of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is now best known for the feminist play How the Vote was Won, which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike. She was also the author of one of the most frequently performed suffrage plays, A Pageant of Great Women (1909), which featured the character of Jane Austen as one of its "Learned Women."
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence, PC was a British Labour politician who, among other things, campaigned for women's suffrage.
Lena Margaret Ashwell, Lady Simson was a British actress and theatre manager and producer, known as the first to organise large-scale entertainment for troops at the front, which she did during World War I. After the war she created the Lena Ashwell Players.
The United Procession of Women, or Mud March as it became known, was a peaceful demonstration in London on 9 February 1907 organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in which more than 3,000 women marched from Hyde Park Corner to the Strand in support of women's suffrage. Women from all classes participated in what was the largest public demonstration supporting women's suffrage seen until then. It acquired the name "Mud March" from the day's weather since incessant heavy rain left the marchers drenched and mud-spattered.
The Women Writers' Suffrage League (WWSL) was an organisation in the United Kingdom formed in 1908 by Cicely Hamilton and Bessie Hatton. The organisation stated that it wanted "to obtain the Parliamentary Franchise for women on the same terms as it is, or may be, granted to men. Its methods are the methods proper to writers – the use of the pen." The organisation viewed itself as a writers' group rather than a literary society. Membership was not based on literary merit, but instead was granted to anyone who had published and sold a written work. Members also paid an annual subscription fee of 2s. 6d. The league was inclusive and welcomed writers of all genders, classes, genres, and political persuasions provided they were pro-suffrage. By 1911 the league was composed of conservatives, liberals and socialists, women of power and women who worked hard and members of the military. The league disbanded on 24 January 1919 following the passing Representation of the People Bill in February 1918, granting women over the age of 30 the right to vote.
A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Beatrice Harraden (1864–1936) was a British writer and suffragette.
Christabel Gertrude Marshall was a British campaigner for women's suffrage, a playwright and author. Marshall lived in a ménage à trois with the artist Clare Atwood and the actress, theatre director, producer and costume designer Edith Craig from 1916 until Craig's death in 1947.
The Artists' Suffrage League (ASL) (1907–c.1918) was a suffrage society formed to change parliamentary opinion and engage in public demonstrations and other propaganda activities.
Suffrage drama is a form of dramatic literature that emerged during the British women's suffrage movement in the early twentieth century. Suffrage performances lasted approximately from 1907-1914. Many suffrage plays called for a predominant or all female cast. Suffrage plays served to reveal issues behind the suffrage movement. These plays also revealed many of the double standards that women faced on a daily basis. Suffrage theatre was a form of realist theatre, which was influenced by the plays of Henrik Ibsen. Suffrage theatre combined familiar everyday situations with relatable characters on the stage in the style of realist theatre.
The United Suffragists was a women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
Rose Elsie Neville Howey, known as Elsie Howey, was an English suffragette. She was a militant activist with the Women's Social and Political Union and was jailed at least six times between 1908 and 1912.
Mary Elizabeth Phillips was an English suffragette, feminist and socialist. She was the longest prison serving suffragette. She worked for Christabel Pankhurst but was sacked; she then worked for Sylvia Pankhurst as Mary Pederson or Mary Paterson. In later life she supported women's and children's organisations.
Helen Alexander Archdale was a Scottish feminist, suffragette and journalist. Archdale was the Sheffield branch organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union and later its prisoners' secretary in London.
Inez Bensusan (1871–1967) was an Australian born Jewish actress, playwright and suffragette in the UK. She was a leader of the Actresses' Franchise League and the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage.
Marjery Bryce was a British suffragette and actor, rode dressed as Joan of Arc in WSPU parades in support of votes for women.
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