The Case for Women's Suffrage/Tactics
TACTICS
[Mr. Cholmeley's article contains many valuable criticisms, but it would hardly be accepted by most of the other contributors to this volume, certainly not by me. In the first place Mr. Cholmeley seems hardly aware of the extent to which the "shock tactics" of the Westminster demonstrations was deliberately planned for the end which he admits they have fulfilled. Again, we have two guides only to the opinions of the average British working man on the subject: By repeated declarations, through their Trade Unions, working men have declared, by enormous majorities, in favour of universal, not merely manhood suffrage; the recent conference of the Labour Party at Belfast, representing nearly a million Trade Unionists, while rejecting unfortunately the so-called "limited" bill, was absolutely unanimous in favour of "votes for women." Again, working men form the vast majority of the present electorate, and that electorate, only last year, returned to the House of Commons 420 men pledged to Women's Suffrage. As against these facts what is there to prove Mr. Cholmeley's assertions that " Women's Suffrage is not a democratic policy yet," and that " the working class have still got to be converted to it?" In view, too, of the above large Parliamentary majority, and the striking simplicity of the Bill drafted by the Labour Party and quoted in the introduction to this volume, what is there to justify his assertion that Women's Suffrage is "not yet a matter of practical politics?" Is nothing "practical politics" until it has been accepted by Mr. Asquith?—B. V.]
CRUSADES have almost always come to grief for want of tactics; and this is natural, since tactics require a cool head, and a capacity for compromise, while the crusading spirit is hot and impatient. The movement in favour of Women's Suffrage is in danger now for the same reasons. Because the advocates of Women's Suffrage are stronger than ever in numbers and intelligence, because they include women and men of all shades of political opinion and of every variety of temperament, it is sometimes assumed that the cause must prevail by its own momentum. There could not be a greater mistake. It is a mistake based upon mere blindness to the essential character of political action. Politics are concerned with means, and only those who are able to agree about means can exercise an effective political force. The very greatness of the cause helps to blind us to this; we see that it is a great cause, that no party bias is too strong for it, that social prejudices are levelled by it, and we forget that what is wanted for success is not so much to unite every kind of person in a general sympathy, but to combine the largest possible number in active support of some particular action. Otherwise we may have a million enthusiasts who will produce no more results than that Children's Crusade which nearly seven hundred years ago strewed the plains of Europe with pitiful bones.
What are the chances of such an organised force or such a combination of forces as can alone bring success? There are already as many parties among the supporters of Women's Suffrage as would suffice to stock a Parliament. There is the National Union party, which will take any instalment of Women's Suffrage—even a Bill for conferring the vote upon one woman, as it was put the other day—on the ground that as soon as the door has been opened ever so little, the pressure upon it must force it all the way in a very short time. But then there is the Adult Suffrage party, which denounces this state of mind as a mere shirking of the logical basis of the whole demand, and foresees that the satisfaction of it would give the wealthy and comfortable a preponderance in the State which would defer all social reform and all further extension of the franchise indefinitely.
The opponents of Women's Suffrage—the tooth-and-nail, "woman is woman" opponents—are not the enemy to be feared. They have not a leg to stand on, and they know it. The enemy is within. The enemy is the disorganisation that comes of divided counsels; and that enemy will be fatal unless it can be speedily crushed. There is plenty of the enthusiasm which will face personal inconvenience and suffering; what is wanted is more of the spirit which can subordinate personal enthusiasms to an understanding of the conditions of success. It was said of William the Third by his great opponent, that "he bore himself in all things like an old general, except that he exposed himself like a young soldier." We have got to prove that enthusiasm is not incompatible with generalship, or the fortresses of prejudice will not go down before our arms.
It is of no use to say that all sections of Suffragists are working for the same end. That is an excellent reason for toleration, but it is not business. All political parties are working for the same end, if you only put the end far enough away from politics; for no party could exist unless most of its members believed that their aims were for the common good. Politics are concerned with means; the successful politician is the man who is quite sure of the means, and who, being quite sure, can make that means for the time being his end. Only by so doing can he collect enough force to carry him even a little way towards the realisation of his ideal, whatever it may be, and no matter how many he may share it with.
Therefore the question, What are the right tactics for the supporters of Women's Suffrage? is the most important question that they have to consider. A wrong answer, if generally accepted, may not only put off the realisation of their hopes for many years, but may even so affect the order in which political changes come about as to destroy, or greatly impair, the value of the great change upon which all our hearts are set.
The immediate objects of the tactics with which we are concerned are two—the conversion of the public and the coercion of Parliament. In order to convert the public to any given view, if that view is to find expression in action, it is necessary not only to make the public see that that particular view is right, but to demonstrate that it will be the worse for it unless it acts accordingly. Those who object to the attempts upon the House of Commons generally fail to do justice to the utility of any kind of surprise in helping to open the eyes of the public. To borrow a military phrase, they are valuable to begin with as shock tactics. It has been said many times, but it will have to be said many times more, that John Bull will not begin to pay attention until you stand on your head to talk to him. Nobody likes doing it, but it has to be done somehow. It will disgust sober, decorous people; they will probably say that the fact that you can behave so proves that there is less in your arguments than they thought there was; you will alienate friends. It does not matter two straws. There is not the smallest doubt that thousands of people in England have now begun to consider Women's Suffrage seriously who would never have heard of it but for the militant Suffragists who deliberately faced imprisonment, and, what was worse, the pillory provided by newspapers on the look-out for sensations. As a mere matter of tactics, the women who went to Holloway scored a triumphant success.
But it would be a great mistake to attribute all or even any considerable part of the Westminster demonstrations to deliberate tactics. They were valuable to begin with because they compelled attention; but if that were all, there would be something in the attitude of the superior person who says that it is time they were abandoned, that they are now only silly and mischievous. Those who take that view simply ignore the fact which made those demonstrations possible. They ignore the fact that it was bitter anger that prompted those defiant acts, and that anger has done queer things before now, even in other cases where superior persons thought that the franchise ought to be argued about dispassionately. It is just as important to convince the public that women are angry as it is to convince them that women are right; indeed it is more important, because it is more likely to ensure a respectful attention to their demands. If women are not really angry, or if not enough of them are angry to matter, or if, as some tell us, the knowledge that some women have lost patience is likely to make all other women more patient, there is an end of it; demonstrations are then only machinery, and must be managed accordingly; but to those who believe that these demonstrations mean anger, an anger that is becoming daily more bitter and more widely spread, it seems not only difficult to criticise them as tactics but almost impertinent to treat them as tactics at all. At any rate, the whole course of history teaches us that violence in resenting injustice has always made it more, and not less, likely that injustice will be remedied; and there is no particular reason why the injustice of withholding votes from women should be any exception.
Demonstrations, then, are valuable as tactics just so far as they mean something more than tactics; but when we come to questions of election policy we are in the region of tactics pure and simple. Here there are two main questions to be answered: First, what ought to be our immediate aim; what measure ought we to support, or what sort of measure? second, what should be our immediate means—how are we to act at Parliamentary elections or during Parliamentary discussions?
The answer given to the first of these questions by the Adult Suffrage party is attractive from its simplicity, and because it seems to have secured a large measure of support from members of all parties. I am not here concerned with the desirability of universal adult suffrage, but as a matter of tactics I think that the Adult Suffrage party is gravely mistaken. It is playing into the hands of two sets of opponents—those who support adult suffrage merely because it is the most convenient means of opposing any smaller extension of the franchise to women, and those who are really in favour of universal adult suffrage for men only. It must be remembered that Women's Suffrage is not a democratic policy yet, and that the bulk of the men of the working class have still got to be converted to it. It is quite possible that adult suffrage for men may come soon; the latchkey decision seems to have brought us so near to it that a quite ordinarily unscrupulous Government might think it worth while to go the rest of the way. But there is not the smallest chance that adult suffrage for men and women would be worth any Government's while within the next twenty years. The Adult Suffrage policy is wrong because it will not only fail to get what women want, but will help their enemies to give them what they do not want. It will not get the vote for all women, because too many of its professed supporters are entirely opposed to that aim; it may help to get the vote for all men, and if it does, women may resign themselves to the exercise of great patience, for it is not the new voters who would help them to exercise anything else. It is not in the least surprising that those who know most about the lives of the working woman, particularly in the great industrial centres, should find this policy attractive. They have spent their powers in organising these women; they feel that they know them to be capable, and they want the vote for them. But the Adult Suffrage policy, for all that, is at this moment bad tactics; it is playing the enemy's game. In politics, as in fighting, the right game is to concentrate upon the enemy's weak point, and the weak point is the simple denial of the vote to women as such. Any measure which breaks through there gives us the battle. It may be difficult to construct such a measure; indeed, Mr. Dickinson's bill proves that; but if only the whole intelligence of the supporters of Women's Suffrage would grapple with the difficulty, there can be no doubt that a solution would be found, and that the forces which backed that solution would be irresistible. Those who cry "Impossible!" with the loudest voice are those who are afraid that a way may be found.
Even more important, if possible, than the choice of a measure is the choice of an election policy. There is plenty of evidence of the dangers of disunion. Hexham made a Government anxious for a few weeks, but with Suffragists working for both sides the anxiety soon faded, and the only consolation that women could derive from the result was that the campaign was a refutation of those who profess to fear that women will vote solid against men; for if they are so divided when their own greatest interest is concerned, they are hardly likely to unite in any lesser cause. Here, as before, the heroic policy is attractive, and has a logical basis. Private members may pledge themselves, may introduce bills till the crack of doom, but until a Government takes up the question, nothing can be done. Governments, then, are the proper object of attack, and no man shall become a member of Parliament who supports a Government which refuses to make our cause its own. This policy differs from the Adult Suffrage policy in that it would be absolutely justified by success; but it is even less likely to succeed. It depends upon a serious exaggeration of the forces that can be brought into the field, and there are few worse errors in tactics than this. The great mass of those who want votes for women are not going to subordinate every other political conviction to that, and unless they would do so, this policy could not possibly succeed. The possibilities of such a subordination are too obvious. Suppose that the present Government could be turned out—and on the most cheerful calculation it would take some years to do it by means of by-elections fought on the Suffrage question—what would be the feelings of Liberal Suffragists when they found themselves under a Tory Government, which would be opposed to all their convictions but one, and would be no more pledged to respect that one than its predecessor? Besides, it is preposterous to ask any but a fanatic to vote against men who have worked for years in the cause of Women's Suffrage, simply because they have not yet managed to make the Government move, and to vote for men whose only virtue may be that they have every political vice under the sun except that of being supporters of the Government. The only reasonable aim is to get such a House of Commons as will insist upon Women's Suffrage being made a Government policy; there is plenty of work to be done before that position is won, but it can be won, and it certainly will be won if we do not waste our strength in quixotic enterprises.
This is a controversial chapter, and it was meant to be so, but at least there is one kind of tactics upon which there need be no controversy. The one advantage belonging to the fact that Women's Suffrage is not yet quite a matter of practical politics is that it is still a matter for argument. When the forces are in the field, and a decisive battle is upon us, it will be too late to make converts; it is not yet too late, and if the supporters of Women's Suffrage will only go on arguing, and arguing, and arguing—why, it is just possible that the enemy may leave the field after all without striking a blow.