New Zealand and Australia petition the new king for votes for other women in the the Commonwealth.
This is taken from the WSPU Votes for Women Magazine of May 26, 1910.
As the New Prince of Wales was still a minor, the WSPU was hoping that the Queen would be appointed regent in the case of this new king, George, dying suddenly.
The first meeting of the WSPU after Edward’s death was held at the Scala theatre. Miss Pankhurst talked of the political situation and a Reverend Start-Up made the following speech, which I will have Edith read or here, or hear someone read out loud, with passion. As she has just lost her chance at love she will be converted to militanism with this speech.
It is a terrific speech (just the first part printed here) and if you don’t believe it, read it out loud..
We meet under the shadow of a great national loss. None of King Edward’s subjects were more loyal to him or hold him in more affectionate memory than the members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, comprising, as they do, women of all classes and of every shade of political opinion. At this our first public meeting since his death, we turn again to the task to which we have set our hand, animated by the same principle that ever animated our beloved King, the love of country and fidelity to public duty. Because, let there be no mistake about it, this women’s cry for enfranchisement is not the clamour of self-interest, nor the rebellious shout of those who fell their rights are being refused them. These elements enter of necessity into their thoughts; but, in the main, the movement springs from a deep conviction that the interests of the State demand the frank and equal co-operation of men and women, and that the gravest problems in front of us are only to be solved when men and women have entered together upon their common inheritance of civic and national responsibility. Like all great movements this is essentially unselfish; it comes not from a keen sense of individual wrong, but from a wider outlook, a profounder sympathy, a deeper appreciation of the claims of all around us to a fuller and richer and more joyous life.
The characteristics of unselfishness should make us all hesitate very much before allowing ourselves to be found in opposition to it. The granting of the vote to women is the crow and seal of a long process of emancipation, to be discerned by every student of history. In this process some part of the human race had to lead and since life is an evolution form the lower and physical to the higher and the spiritual, it is natural that the lead should have been taken by those who, in the primitive stages of the race, exercised the lordship given by simple brute force. Thus it came to pass that the emancipation of men, the recognition of their civic responsibility and of their consequent right to civic power has preceded the emancipation of women. But it would be easy, I think, to show what the process in the case of women , thought slower and more imperceptible, has really been going on , until today , women all over the world are demanding, as the men have done before them, the recognition of their rights. They have acquired not only a sense of civic and national responsibility, but they have qualified themselves in every way for the fulfilment of that responsibility. They now ask for the vote, an instrument without which that work cannot be accomplished.
They do not, however, attack any exaggerated value to the vote; the simple fact is that it is the instrument of political power. There is no perfect government under heaven, either democratic or autocratic. The only perfect government would be the perfect behaviour of every individual citizen without control from anybody, and that would be anarchy in the ideal sense. But we have ot reached that point yet, and in the meantime, our government is the resultant of many forces – it is the outcome of the instincts and the self-interest of the mass, a sort of ‘general average of the community’. In the striking of that average, in the expression of those human instincts , in the guarding of those interests – women have hitherto been left out of account. Perhaps they were not ready for it before, but whether that be so or not, they can now no longer be left out of account without serious injustice to themselves and serious injury to the State. The process of emancipation in the case of men would have been vain if in the end they had not won the recognition of their citizenship; aspiration, mental and moral struggle, education, and development would have been useless if they had not culminated in higher responsibilities and more arduous tasks.
What is true in their case is true in yours, and therefore I say the political enfranchisement of women is the crown and seal of a long process of emancipation that has always been going on, and that can no more be kept back than the stars can be hindered in their course, or the tides in their flow.
When this enfranchisement comes, women will bring to bear upon the problems of the day just those qualities in which women most excel. These problems are communal, not individualistic. The community is something more than a mass of individuals, it is a living entity; the individual is not a separate creation, fashioned apart, the community itself precedes and shapes the individual; none of his characteristics, both good and evil, have any meaning except in the light of his relationship to those around him. This being so, it is of some importance to remember that the qualities of which women excel are just those that are most needed in the solution of the grave and difficult question with which today the world is face; those qualities are patience, enthusiasm and perception.
