Source 22:  'The Citizenship of Women: A Plea for Woman's Suffrage', by Keir Hardie MP

 

Description

James Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915) was an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and worked closely with Sylvia Pankhurst and other members of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Keir Hardie became the first socialist MP in Britain, and was among the group that formed the Independent Labour Party in 1893. He was elected as the first leader of the Labour Party.

'The Citizenship of Women: A Plea for Woman's Suffrage' was first published in 1905 by W S Stead.

[NLS Shelfmark: Acc. 3721/148 (2)]

Transcript

Here, then, we have it proved beyond cavil or question that whatever the Woman's Enfranchisement Bill might do for propertied women, it would for a certainty and at once put 850,000 working women on the parliamentary voters' rolls of Great Britain, and a like proportion in Ireland. The fact speaks for itself. The Woman's Enfranchisement Bill does not concern itself with franchise qualifications; it is for the removal of the sex disqualification only; and yet on the present franchise qualifications and reactionary registration laws it would at once lift 1,250,000 British women from the political sphere to which 'idiots, lunatics and paupers' are consigned, and transform them into free citizens, and open wide the door whereby in the future every man and every woman may march side by side into the full enjoyment of adult suffrage.