Women and the Vote

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Guy Opperman.)

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

I requested this Adjournment debate as yesterday marked exactly 150 years since the philosopher and Member of this House, John Stuart Mill, moved the first mass petition to the House of Commons on behalf of women claiming their right to vote. The largest paper petition ever received by this House was, I believe, the petition to end the transatlantic slave trade. That victory made it clear that public petitioning was then, as it is today, a means to take this House by storm, to grab our attention and to bang on the Government’s door requiring change.

In 1866, Mill believed that the time was right. Change in this House resulted in the recognition of the right to vote of men who rented property as well as of those who owned it. Mill had already written, though not published, his great work, “On the Subjugation of Women”. The first petition from an individual woman was submitted to this House in 1832, but the petition in 1866 represented the first organised campaign. It was the beginning of the movement that was to change our country.

Those Victorian times, despite the presence of a woman monarch, held mixed fortunes for women. One of the signatories to the petition, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was refused access to medical training, and even when a Paris university granted her a qualification, the British medical authorities would not ratify it and allow her to practise. Women were told at the time that education itself was damaging to their health. Education, Mr Speaker! How could any of us be sitting on these Benches now without education in one form or another? Yet in 1866, it was considered perfectly reasonable to oppose women voting because of their supposed lack of education and their unfitness to receive it. Other signatories, Barbara Bodichon and Emily Davies, were the driving forces behind opening up higher education for women. Those women were fighting to have their voices heard, their interests recognised and their opinions weighed with the exact same scales that were used for men.

Today we have debated the right to vote in the upcoming EU referendum—perhaps the most extensive and significant exercise of democracy in the history of this country. Millions of women will be voting, in the same numbers as men. In fact, at the last election there was a 66% turnout among women, which was almost identical to the male turnout. The future direction of this country, our collective potential and our future successes will be down to women as well as men. That is the lesson that I believe we should take from the 1866 petition. Ludicrous though it seems to have to say it, there never was any lack of intelligence, aptitude or desire on the part of women to be involved in politics, and there is not now.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She is right to point out that we have made progress— 192 women now sit in this Parliament—but we need to see more progress at the next election. Does she, like me, feel that we need the sort of progress that we made in 2015, when we saw a 30% increase in female representation in this place? Should we not be striving for the same progress next time?

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

And in 1997, when we had all-women shortlists.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for that intervention. I know how hard she has worked in her own party to bring forward advances for women. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) has also just mentioned the advances made in 1997.

Women did not just have to fight for the right to vote; they had to fight for the right truly to be themselves, whatever that means. They had to fight, as we have to fight, for the right to exist as others do, and to make choices about how to realise our ambition and serve our country. So what holds us back? Well, for a start, let us look at this EU referendum. It is a decision that will affect us all, but the debate has too often been dominated by male voices. It has been a debate in which the ever-changing opinion of one male Tory Back Bencher seems to take precedence over the views of a whole host of women in the Cabinet and shadow Cabinet. I am not going to make many friends among Tory Back Benchers this evening—at least not on the male side.

On representation, we may have parity of votes, but we certainly do not have parity of voice. Public debate too often excludes women or shouts them down. The point is that we may have made huge progress over the last few decades on the number of women MPs, on women in the Cabinet and on all sorts measures, but there is so much still to do, because not everyone is able to realise their true value and—even worse—there is still violence.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I asked the hon. Lady beforehand if she would give way, and I congratulate her on bringing this matter to the House for consideration. There were suffragette groups and movements across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Starting in the 1860s, there were 20 suffrage groups in Northern Ireland before the first world war. Does the hon. Lady feel, like many inside and outside this House, that there is a need to remember historical importance? Tonight is an example of getting the historical importance right. Is there not a need to remember each and every year and to do the same in education in schools as well?

[Alison McGovern]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind intervention. It is certainly true that there is progress to be made for women across the whole United Kingdom, definitely including Northern Ireland.

I believe that the reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) of the names of the women killed by men this year will be a significant moment for this House that few who heard it will forget. As Women’s Aid has highlighted, however, women who have fled to refuges to escape domestic violence remain disfranchised because they are unable to register anonymously. Thousands of women, whose voices are crying out to be heard, are silenced because of arcane regulations.

Mr Speaker, you were present last night at the lighting of “New Dawn”, a work of art which was commissioned to mark the anniversary of the 1866 petition. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), my colleague on and Chair of the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, who led the project brilliantly. The artist, Mary Branson, has created a beautiful installation, lit in the colours of the votes for women movement. It is a special work of art, representing not just an individual, but an idea, and not just an idea, but a force of change. Any number of worthy people could have been represented—any number of the signatories to the petition, the anniversary of which I am marking this evening—but I am unsure that that would have been right, because political change is never down to an individual. Political change happens because all of us change our minds. It happens when we stand up for that terribly simple idea, one which we know in our heart to be true but which is often forgotten, that every one of us is equal. The many discs, lit up by the tide of the Thames, represent the sweeping power of change and the light of hope.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for agreeing to give way when I approached her earlier today, because the anniversary is important from an Oldham perspective. I am leading the fundraising campaign for a statue of Annie Kenney, who was a working-class suffragette leader and an inspiration to many. I also want to reflect on the fact that although there is no doubt that men can be part of the problem, that does not mean that men cannot be part of the solution. It is important that we work together to remind people of the sacrifices that were made by so many.

[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I commend his efforts to remember a working-class member of the fight for women’s votes.

The new work that we lit up last night is bold, daring, and imaginative. It is a tribute, yes, but it will also serve, just as the archway leading from Members’ Lobby to the Chamber does, as a reminder.

You may know, Mr Speaker, that there were protests outside this building last night, in part against the violence that I mentioned that too many women still face. I say to those who protested last night outside St Stephen’s entrance and shouted with furious anger, “Dead women can’t vote,” that they are right to be angry. They are right be angry with violent men, but all of us must choose how we use that anger: whether to hold our placard and do no more or whether to take up the right that our sisters fought for not just to vote, but to hold office and seek the real power to take decisions on behalf of women and men.

In 1866, women hammered on the door of this place because they had no other choice. Hammering on the door was the only way to make their voices heard, to stand proud and to say, “Here we are. These are our numbers. We have the right to be valued and we count.” This is the real point about 1866: it was never about equal votes for women; it was always about equal worth for women. A new dawn, Mr Speaker, but a very old fight —a fight that is as alive in 2016 as it was 150 years ago.