It is a class war, not a sex war

“That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.” - Adopted in 1904 by the SPGB

“The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink
Together, dwarf’d or godlike, bond or free” - Tennyson

100 years ago today, the Representation of People Act 1918 was passed. The law said that women over the age of 30 who occupied a house (or were married to someone who did) could now vote. This meant 8.5 million women now had their say over who was in Parliament - about two in every five women in the UK. It also said that all men over the age of 21 could vote - regardless of whether or not they owned property. The number of men who could now vote went from 8 million to 21 million. It was another 10 years until a law called the Equal Franchise Act in 1928 that suffrage was extended to all women over the age 21, meaning that women finally had the same voting rights as men.

A group called the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which was formed in 1897. In 1903, a group called the Women's Social and Political Union began. Although the organisations used different methods, they both had one goal - to get some women the vote.

Unlike many political parties of the time, the Socialist Party declined from endorsing either campaign. Our view was that democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, and for ourselves that end is socialism. The mere attainment of the power to register a vote was not in itself the end to be aimed at. 

In 1918 only those women having the necessary property qualifications were permitted to vote. This excludes not only all those single working women unable to qualify because of their poverty, but it also bars practically the whole of the married women of the working class who have no property qualifications apart from their husbands'. Further, it increases enormously the voting power of the well-to-do, since the head of the wealthy household can always impart the necessary qualifications to all the women of his house, while the working-man, through his poverty, is entirely unable to do so. The limited suffrage was consequently only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the 'middle class', and proxy votes for the wealthy which possibly tipped the balance of votes against those of the working class. They were not campaigning for votes for all women but, whether intentionally or not, people whose policy would have strengthened the political power of the propertied class by increasing the proportion of capitalist voters at the expense of working class voters. No wonder the Socialist Party at the time did not offer to them its support.

In 1908, we accused the suffragette movement of being “a movement by women of the wealthy and middle class to open up for themselves more fully careers of exploitation, and to share in the flesh-pots of political office, to get sinecures, position, and emoluments among the governing caste...The Suffragette movement is upon all counts but a bulwark of capitalism. It is directly opposed to the interests of the working class—women as well as men ” And who was the first women to take her seat in Parliament, the Tory, Viscountess Astor, four years later it was the turn of the Duchess of Atholl to become an MP.

The suffragettes fought for the freedom of the vote so that they could have their say in the laws governing their property. The position of millions of working class women who had no property and were, in fact, bound hand and foot by their economic dependence upon the employer directly or upon some employed male relative did not rouse the ire of the suffragettes. Obtaining the vote has done nothing to alter that. Only when working class women learn their true position in society will they know how to use their vote wisely, and for this the suffragette movement had no time. 

Working class women, as well as men, will find their political expression in the Socialist Party. Working women are either in economic bondage to an employer or to their husbands, and socialism ends both states of bondage. It is useless for women to fight against the various effects of the one great evil. They must break the economic stranglehold upon the whole of the working class.

When the 1914 war broke out, the WSPU went super-patriotic. The name of their paper was changed from The Suffragette to Britannia.  Sylvia Pankhurst fell out with her mother and elder sister. The independent East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) which demanded universal suffrage for both men and women changed its name to Workers Suffrage Federation and later its paper 'Woman's Dreadnought' became 'Workers' Dreadnought'. In 1918 the WSF became the Workers Socialist Federation. 

 Instead of the political and economic separation of men and women, we, in the Socialist Party, want the organisation of men and women, not in opposite camps, but in one world-wide body, out for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist cooperative commonwealth, which alone can give economic emancipation to the workers of the world, male and female.  The principle 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' will apply, a much better and more rational way of putting women and men in a position of equality. Class society creates the conditions for women's inferior treatment. Whatever form the subordination of women has assumed, it is a consequence of the class division of society; in the case of capitalism, the division between owners and non-owners of the means of producing wealth. Working class women, by contrast, share with others in their class the condition of wage slavery. Whichever form it takes, whether it is real prostitution or working on the assembly line, they have to sell part of themselves —  their labour power — in order to live. As Marx put it: Prostitution is only the specific form of the universal prostitution of the working class'.

Essentially, what the suffragettes stood for was votes for rich women and so not worthy of socialist or working class support.  A demand for universal adult suffrage would have been more acceptable but that's not what they wanted, only votes for women on the same terms as men at the time.That would have left most women and one-third of men without the vote. Yet, we're supposed to admire them.