The Church League for Women's Suffrage (CLWS) was an organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. The league was started in London, but by 1913 it had branches across England, in Wales and Scotland and Ireland. [1]
The Church League for Women's Suffrage (CLWS) was an organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. The league was started in London, but by 1913 it had branches across England, in Wales and Scotland and Ireland. [1]
This organisation aimed to 'Secure the Vote in Church and State as it is, or may be granted to men'. It was over a century later that females were permitted to be ordained as bishops within the Church of England. The Church League in 1914 allowed individuals to participate in other movements for the cause of women's equality but their own organisation's 'only methods.. are those of Prayer and Education". A benefit of the League was to refute the charge that the Church was indifferent to the matter of women's right to vote. [2]
The first woman to preach in a Church of Ireland church, which was done with the approval of the Archbishop of Dublin and the church's governors, was Edith Picton-Turbervill. She was speaking in Ireland under the auspices of the CLWS.
The League was founded by the Reverend Claude Hinscliff in 1909, who was its secretary for a long time. [4] Other founding members included Margaret Nevinson and Olive Wharry, [5] and Joan Cather, whose husband Lt. John Leonard Cather was chair of its finance committee. [6]
Notable members included Ellen Oliver, Frances Balfour and Louise Creighton and the more militant Muriel Matters, Florence Canning, and the outstanding Maude Royden, Lady Constance Lytton [1] and Katherine Harley. [7] Emily Wilding Davison, who died under the King's horse at Epsom, was a member, and her funeral was held at St George's, Bloomsbury, led by its vicar, Charles Baumgarten (also a member of the League), Claude Hinscliff, [8] and Charles Escreet, Archdeacon of Lewisham. [9]
The Irish Church had resisted the League because it refused to denounce the behaviour of militant suffragettes. By 1913 Florence Canning led the executive committee and she was one of six of the thirteen members identified for their militancy. [1]
After the end of World War I, and the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave votes to many but not all women, the League decided to re-focus its efforts. In 1919 it renamed itself The League of the Church Militant. [10] It continued to lobby to extend the franchise to achieve equality with men (Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928), and a range of other theologically liberal causes [11] It also focussed its efforts on the ordination of women. However, its suffrage associations limited its work, and it dissolved shortly before the 1930 Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican Communion bishops from around the world. It was replaced by the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women to the Historic Ministry (1930-1978). [12]
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 founded in 1903. 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.
In the United Kingdom, as in other countries, feminism seeks to establish political, social, and economic equality for women. The history of feminism in Britain dates to the very beginnings of feminism itself, as many of the earliest feminist writers and activists—such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Barbara Bodichon, and Lydia Becker—were British.
The Women's Freedom League was an organisation in the United Kingdom from 1907 to 1961 which campaigned for women's suffrage, pacifism and sexual equality. It was founded by former members of the Women's Social and Political Union after the Pankhursts decided to rule without democratic support from their members.
The Women's Franchise League was a British organisation created by the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst together with her husband Richard and others in 1889, fourteen years before the creation of the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. The President of the organisation in 1889 was Harriet McIlquham. In 1895 the committee who met in Aberystwyth were Ursula Mellor Bright, Mrs Behrens, Esther? Bright, Herbert Burrows, Dr Clark MP, Mrs Hunter of Matlock Bank, Jane Brownlow, Mrs E. James, H.N.Mozley, Alice Cliff Scatcherd, Countess Gertrude Guillaume-Schack, Jane Cobden Unwin and Dr and Mrs Pankhurst.
Teresa Billington-Greig was a British suffragette who was one of the founders of the Women's Freedom League in 1907. She had left the Women's Social and Political Union - also known as the WSPU – as she considered the leadership led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters too autocratic. In 1904, she was appointed by the WSPU as a travelling speaker for the organisation. In Autumn 1906, Billington-Greig was tasked with drumming up support for branches of WSPU in Scotland. On 25 April 1906, she unveiled a 'Votes for Women' banner from the Ladies Gallery during the debate in the House of Commons. In June 1906, she was arrested in a fracas outside of Chancellor of the Exchequer H. H. Asquith's home, and as a result was the first suffragette to be incarcerated in Holloway Prison.
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).
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragistα, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
The Open Christmas Letter was a public message for peace addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria", signed by a group of 101 British suffragists at the end of 1914 as the first Christmas of the First World War approached. The Open Christmas Letter was written in acknowledgment of the mounting horror of modern war and as a direct response to letters written to American feminist Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), by a small group of German women's rights activists. Published in January 1915 in Jus Suffragii, the journal of the IWSA, the Open Christmas Letter was answered two months later by a group of 155 prominent German and Austrian women who were pacifists. The exchange of letters between women of nations at war helped promote the aims of peace, and helped prevent the fracturing of the unity which lay in the common goal they shared, suffrage for women.
St. Joan's International Alliance is a non profit women's organization. St. Joan's is a feminist Catholic organization, with a focus on women's equality. It is named after St. Joan of Arc. The organization has played a major role in influencing the ordination of women and general human rights. Their mission is "to secure the political, social and economic equality between men and women and to further the work and usefulness of Catholic women as citizens".
The United Suffragists was a women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.
Gertrude Eaton was a Welsh singer, and co-founder of the Society of Women Musicians. She was also active as a suffragist, and on the issue of prison reform.
The Woman Voter was a monthly suffragist journal published in New York City by the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP). It ran between 1910 and 1917. The first editor was Mary Ritter Beard. Beard created a suffragist publication which was unique in offering coverage of topics that "cut across class, age and organizational boundaries."
Women's suffrage in Wales has historically been marginalised due to the prominence of societies and political groups in England which led the reform for women throughout the United Kingdom. Due to differing social structures and a heavily industrialised working-class society, the growth of a national movement in Wales grew but then stuttered in the late nineteenth century in comparison with that of England. Nevertheless, distinct Welsh groups and individuals rose to prominence and were vocal in the rise of suffrage in Wales and the rest of Great Britain.
Votes for Women was a newspaper associated with the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. Until 1912, it was the official newspaper of the Women's Social and Political Union, the leading suffragette organisation. Subsequently, it continued with a smaller circulation, at first independently, and then as the publication of the United Suffragists.
Sidney Dillon Shallard was a British socialist activist.
Pleasance Pendred was a British campaigner for women's rights, an activist and suffragette who during her imprisonment in Holloway Prison went on hunger strike as a consequence of which she was force-fed.
Joan Cather (1882–1967) was a suffragette, awarded a Hunger Strike Medal, 'For Valour' and a Holloway brooch for imprisonment in the cause of women's rights to vote, and also as protest refused to take part in the 1911 British Census.
Florence Mary Canning was a British suffragette and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Church League for Women's Suffrage.
Muriel Darton was a British suffrage activist and professional photographer who recorded the Church League for Women's Suffrage campaign and worked in London.
Amy Sanderson née Reid (1876–1931), was a Scottish suffragette, national executive committee member of the Women's Freedom League, who was imprisoned twice. She was key speaker at the 1912 Hyde Park women's rally, after marching from Edinburgh to London, and, with Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Greig, was a British delegate to the 1908 and 1923 international women's congresses.
White, Susan J. (2014). "'The Church Militant': A. Maude Royden and the Quest for Women's Equality in the Inter-War Years". In Bailey, Warner M.; Barrett, Lee C. III; Duke, James O. (eds.). The Theologically Formed Heart: Essays in Honor of David J. Gouwens. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications. pp. 47–71. ISBN 978-1-62564-191-5.
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