Women and the vote

On December 14, 1918, Britain's voters went to the polls for the first General Election in eight years, or in Luton's case since a by-election in 1911 which saw Cecil Harmsworth narrowly hold the South Bedfordshire seat for the Liberals. But there was one significant change in 1918 from earlier Parliamentary elections – woman - those aged over 30, at least – would have the right to vote. And that more than doubled the number of electorate in the constituency.

Violet Gwendoline Lewis (pictured), a doctor's wife who was in the rare situation of holding a public office as a member of the Luton Board of Guardians, was never slow to voice her views in a male-dominated age. And in the Saturday Telegraph of November 30, 1918, she wrote on the subject of women and the vote as follows:

Violet Gwendoline LewisIt has always seemed so illogically foolish to my mind that the vote has so long been withheld from women. Many reasons were offered as to why a woman should not enjoy the suffrage privilege side by side with a man.

It was deemed unwomanly by some to want a vote, others manifested no little simulated concern should such a catastrophe as extended franchise come about, and while this reason and that were being frantically offered by some of the leading men of the day as a just cause for refusal, the thinking woman quietly smiled to herself, knowing full well in her own mind there was neither rhyme, reason nor even justice in such an attitude; merely rank, intolerant blind prejudice, and that it was the contemptible refusal of men citizens and suffragists, enjoying the suffrage themselves, to grant a right which had been unjustly wrested from them many years ago.

Now, however, the vote is an accomplished fact, it would be idle to suppose the Earth is about to revolve on its axis at an accelerated speed in consequence; or that women are going to work wonders in one election and bring about reforms that have taken generations almost to evolve, or even to make themselves felt in so marked a manner that they will bring about a new heaven and new earth, for that idea would be just as absurdly illogical as the masculine objection to women having the vote.

No! Great reforms come about slowly, often painfully, but in the end, if men and women are sincere, surely. Women cane and should be very useful as a voter and a steadying influence that the candidate must never lose sight of. She will do well to ponder over her new responsibilities, and in an industrial town such as Luton there are many problems to solve, and many fields of usefulness open to her.

Many great and new responsibilities are going to be hers. She will be able to help evolve better ways and means for the common good of her fellow countrymen and women. She is going to try by her influence to build up a better and more efficient State. Yet it will take time.

She will only be part of a vast army of builders. By-and-bye let us hope the result of her labours will be seen rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of past mistakes. She will need much patience because she has so much to learn.

There are many dangers that beset the path of the woman voter, one in particular that she will find it very difficult to help altogether, is the tendency to allow herself to become too self engrossed, too self centred. With the home ties and calls of the family this is very natural.

It is so easy to talk but so difficult to act and to do the right thing. Naturally, the home must come first: the husband, children housework and all the thousand and one duties that make up the life of a busy woman. There is the work that is never done, yet there are times in the rush and hurry of it all when it is possible to think – over the washtub, whilst darning the family socks, when sewing the children's clothes. At such times as these the woman voter can think a little about the new responsibilities that lie before her, and puzzle out a few of the problems that her newly acquired citizenship will call upon her to solve.

Then there is the grave danger of apathy which will probably lie at the door of the older woman voter – the woman whose family is grown up and only has her man to look after, or she may be a widow and she thinks her interest in life is gone, she has passed through much sorrow and she has lost interest.

It is very natural that she should reason like this. She may think her work is done because she has brought up an settled her children in life, but it is not so. She is the very one who, by her experiences and wider sympathies, might very usefully serve her country, and be a really helpful citizen.

The secret of all happiness in the world is service. Service means unselfishness, self-denial and hard work. In such an atmosphere apathy cannot live or have its being. Let the rebuke never be laid at our door that we women are apathetic, that we did not use our long-delayed vote after we got it, thus we abstained from voting because we had not thought sufficiently about it and had no idea what it involved, or who to vote for.

There should be no resting women in all the length and breadth of this lad, save those who are physically unfit.

It is such a privilege to be living in days such as these, when history is being made faster than we can grasp it. This very fact is bound to fill us with a greater humility here at home when we contemplated the wonderful renunciation of the last four-and-a-half years.

In the face of such noble self-sacrifice, such heroic unfading deeds of glory by our sailors, soldiers and airmen, can we, the women of England, have any other desire but to wish to serve too in out quiet, humble way? To do what we can for those they have left behind, to seek to help those that remain, to try to be of some use, however small and insignificant in the world, to help forward in our own little sphere.

Not self-seeking service! Not place-hunting! Not with the idea of self-aggrandisement, or with the despicable motives of paltry ambition.

If the woman voter thinks to help by climbing up the rungs of the ladder of ambition, eagerly making for a place at the top, then let her vote go unrecorded, let her help be rejected. There has been too much self-service in public life in the past, to much working for an ultimate goal, and that goal has not always been disinterested.

Let the woman voter and citizen be purged of all such contemptible methods, let her very presence in public life – if she elects to follow it and serve in that way – act as a purifying influence and thus cleanse the Augean stables.