Women’s Suffrage WSPU What Women Demand and Equal Voting Terms in Britain circa 1908 to 1909

British Women’s Suffrage

Ephemera

National Women’s Social & Political Union. What Women Demand, circa 1908–1909, states the WSPU’s franchise demand in direct legal terms: women who met the existing qualifications imposed upon male voters should receive the parliamentary vote without exclusion on the basis of sex. Issued during the WSPU’s escalating campaign for women’s suffrage, the leaflet explains the organization’s political objective apart from the demonstrations, arrests, and militant actions for which the WSPU became widely known. Its argument centers on unequal application of existing voting qualifications, declaring that “a woman shall not be refused a vote simply because she is a woman.” The leaflet belongs to the WSPU’s extensive use of printed propaganda to define its demands, recruit support, and press Parliament over women’s enfranchisement.

National Women’s Social & Political Union. No. 25. What Women Demand. 1908–1909. One-page handbill measuring 8 ½ x 5 ½ inches. The text calls for women to receive the vote on the “same terms” as men and explains this demand through the qualifications then governing the male parliamentary franchise. Rather than demanding unrestricted adult suffrage, the WSPU argues that women satisfying the qualifications already applied to men should not be disqualified solely because they were women. The handbill states that more than one million women met these standards and would therefore become enfranchised under the proposal. Its numbered designation, “No. 25,” places the handbill within the WSPU’s larger program of printed campaign literature.

The handbill dates from a period of intensified WSPU pressure on the British government. In October 1908, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were among those arrested following the WSPU campaign surrounding a planned “rush” on the House of Commons, while the organization continued circulating leaflets that articulated its parliamentary demands in concise form. What Women Demand records the specific franchise policy behind that agitation and preserves the WSPU’s own explanation of who would receive the vote under its proposal. Light scattered staining, handling creases along the left edge, and a crease at the lower right corner; overall good condition. A concise statement of the WSPU’s legislative objective during the years when its campaign combined mass political organizing, printed argument, and increasingly confrontational pressure on Parliament.

Item #16397

Price: $225.00