November 2, 1911, to the Editor of The Standard, “Physical Force”
Emily Davison engages two important elements of suffrage politics in this brief letter.
First she uses Gladstone’s own words to support the suffrage cause. The Woman Suffrage
movement regarded Gladstone as a betrayer after the parliamentary debate on the 1884
Reform Bill (Representation of the People Act 1884) to which an amendment was proposed
to grant women the vote on an equal basis with men. The amendment was defeated when
Gladstone would not support it because he feared that it would adversely affect the bill’s
chances in the House of Lords, and he feared that if women were given the vote they would
vote Conservative. In 1892 he publicly acknowledged that he opposed woman suffrage in
principle. The Woman Suffrage movement thus regarded the great Liberal as a betrayer, and
an opponent. That Davison uses his own words, knowing this history as her readers would,
too, is a deft trick. The chief argument against WSPU tactics in 1911 was their resort to
a degree of force. That Gladstone should have said that the end they sought was a triumph
over force scores a strong point against the opponents of Woman Suffrage, generally termed
“antis” by the suffragists. It is also notable that the argument that the status of women
indicates the status of the individual in society is one that Ferdinand Braudel would use
nearly a century later as a basic principle in A History of Civilizations (trans. Richard Mayne,
New York: 1994).
Sir, –With regard to the physical force argument which is always being raised by Anti-
Suffragists, as, for example, by Lord George Hamilton yesterday, will you allow me to
quote some words of Mr. William Ewart Gladstone in his “Gleanings of Past Years,” which
come in very aptly, as the Antis are always quoting his opinions 39:–
“But when we are seeking to ascertain the measure of that conception which any
given race has formed of our nature, there is perhaps no single text so effective as the
position which it assigns its women. For as the law of force is the law of brute creatures, so
in proportion as he is under the yoke of that law does man approximate the brute; and in
proportion, on the other hand, as he has escaped from its dominion is he ascending into the
higher sphere of being, and claiming relationship with deity. But the emancipation and due
ascendency of women are not a mere fact: they are the emphatic assertions of a principle;
and that principle is the dethronement of the law of force and the enthronement of other
and higher laws in its place, and in its despite.”
EMILY WILDING DAVISON
31, Coram-street, W.C. Oct. 31
Special Points
Nov. 2, 1911 con’t The Standard
Miss Emily W. Davison writes: –“Men can use the vote to get women the vote, for the vote
will not be really effective until it is genuinely representative. Injustice hurts the offender
more than the sufferer.”