 Hello and welcome to our video summarising everything you need to know when it comes to women's suffrage and how both the suffragettes and the suffragettes helped women in England manage to get the vote and equal voting rights as men. My name is Barbara and in this video I'll go over the key difference between the suffragettes and the suffragettes but most importantly I'll walk you through a really useful timeline in understanding the long road that women took in Britain in order to secure equal voting rights as men. So let's begin. Now always remember that life in Victorian and Edwardian England was fairly challenging for women during this time because they had few rights. Do bear in mind that the Victorian England period covers Queen Victoria's reign between 1837 to 1901 and Edwardian England this is King Edward who followed Queen Victoria lasted between 1901 to 1910. Now this period was a vastly different time for England where women really had very few rights especially once they were married. Indeed once they were married women became the property of their husbands and a remnant of this actually can be seen today with married women taking the husband's surname never the other way around. Indeed women during this time was the weaker sex. Another traditional notion is that of the dowry. This actually stems from a similar idea that women are seen as the properties of their father and thus sold on as property of their husbands and thus the husband pays a dowry in other words a price tag in order to get the woman's hand in marriage. All of these contributed a notion during Victorian and Edwardian England where women were seen as the weaker sex. Now of course the journey to women's suffrage really was a result of the protests of many women as well as the support of some key male figures in society and especially Parliament which led things to gradually start to change for women. And do bear in mind that this was a very slow process but rule change did begin happening especially during the latter part of the Victorian period and this eventually led to women gaining the right to vote. Now to really understand this journey in this entire process it would be really good to really consider it in terms of a line near timeline and of course within this timeline you will see how the suffragists and the suffragists evolved and the key difference between the suffragists and the suffragette movements. Now when it comes to women's suffrage really a key date to begin with is 1866. This was when a group of women organised a petition that demanded that women should have the same political rights as men. Now during this time they tried to get two MPs in particular Henry Fawcett who was the husband of Millicent Fawcett and John Stuart Mill who both worked in Parliament to influence the second reform bill in order to get a few more equal rights for women. However this was rejected. Now the second reform bill which was passed in 1867 actually increased the number of men who could vote and indeed the men that could vote under the second reform bill had to show that they owned 10 pounds worth of property in their lodgings. Now in 1870 there was the Married Women's Property Act that was passed and this gave married women the right to own their own property and their money so they no longer were seen solely as the property and the money of their husbands they had a bit more freedom and autonomy over their own property. Now do bear in mind well before women gained the right to vote in England as a whole interestingly the Isle of Man which is a tiny small island in England actually gave women the right to vote in 1881 so they were well ahead of their curve. Now in 1884 the representation of the People Act was passed which gave more men the power to vote however women couldn't vote but also bear in mind that not all men under this act could vote actually 40% of men the poorest of men in society didn't still have the right to vote. Now in steps in the suffragists so in 1897 this is when the suffragists were born. Now women were really upset with the second reform bill and the fact that they were ignored in their petition so they set up the London Society for Women's Suffrage. Also 17 women's groups ended up joining up to form the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies which is known by the acronym NUSSS which is a suffragist acronym and it was led by Millicent Fawcett so bear in mind that she was married to Henry Fawcett. Now the NUSSS adopted a peaceful approach achieving change through Parliament so in 1870 to 1884 there were lots of debates in Parliament about women's voting and some people however felt this was too much talking and not enough action. Also do bear in mind that most NUSSS members were middle or upper class women who campaigned for property owning women not necessarily campaigning for representation of working class women. This therefore led some women especially notably Emmeline Pankhurst to feel that they were not as represented by the suffragists and Emmeline Pankhurst along with her daughters in 1903 formed the suffragettes and this was known as the Women's Social Political Union under the acronym WSPU. Now they favoured taking a far more militant approach therefore they used a lot of militant actions such as sabotaging communication lines, having arsonist hacks, letting off bombs, demonstrating and disrupting public meetings and most importantly their suffragists involved far more working class women. Now in 1905 the suffragettes also came up with a really important slogan, deeds meaning actions not words so their slogan was deeds not words and they adopted very aggressive tactics. So between 1900 and 1914 around 1000 women were arrested as a result of the very violent aggressive tactics and put in prison and bear in mind that the government didn't treat them as political prisoners they were treated like common criminals in prison. Now in 1907 there was a split that occurred within the suffragettes and the Women's Freedom League known as the WFL was formed. Now this split happened because the women that formed the WFL were really unhappy with the violence of the suffragettes and they favoured instead more peaceful law breaking such as demonstrations not for example counting themselves as part of the country's census and refusing to pay taxes. In 1910 there were the Women's Anti-Suffrage League which merged with the Men's National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage and this is really important because this highlights that not all women supported the notion of voting and not all women saw voting as an important idea. In fact they saw this as perhaps breaking with the traditional view of the woman who should be at home looking after children. So the Women's Anti-Suffrage League which merged with the Men's National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage actually had 42,000 members who were against women's votes. Now also in 1910 a law called the Consoliation Bill was introduced and it supported many suffragists and suffragettes therefore this law would if it was passed give the vote to a limited number of women with property and wealth. However it was rejected by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill as it didn't include working class women however some suffragists and suffragettes actually saw this as an excuse by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to just defer and put off giving the women vote by using the idea that not enough working class women were represented as a convenient excuse. Now this bill so the Consoliation Bill was reintroduced again in 1911 and the Prime Minister at the time called Asquith pledged to make the bill a law in 1912 however in 1913 he changed his position and this law never became a bill. Now in 1913 two key events happened firstly there was the Cat and Mouse Act which was introduced officially legally known as the Prisoners Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act and what this law said was that suffragettes especially who went on hunger strikes in prison after being imprisoned but for their violent actions were sometimes released and then found and re-arrested once they went back home 8 became healthy because the government didn't want to make martyrs of them they didn't want them to die in prison. Now another key thing that happened in 1913 is Emily Davidson who was a suffragette essentially tried to disrupt the Derby but she ended up dying after being trampled on by the King's Horse and this was seen again as a really big loss for the suffragettes and of course also a lot of people who saw this saw this as a huge disruption and this to some degree for some was seen as losing the support of the suffragettes because there was too much disruption by women. Now of course in 1914 the major event that happened was the start of the first world war and as a result of this world war both suffragettes and suffragettes did call off their campaigns to support the war efforts. However during the war there were a lot of women who really supported the war efforts so firstly the women's land army employed over 260,000 women as farm labourers in helping the war effort. Do bear in mind of course that a lot of farmers and a lot of people a lot of men were called to war and therefore there were a lot of farms which were left unmanned and women took over. There are also many munitions women so many women who went to work in factories and as a result actually a lot of them ended up suffering ill health from the chemicals with which they worked to make ammunition because they were over exposed to things like TNT which gave them yellow coloured skin so of course this shows also the sacrifices that women made in order to help Britain win the first world war. Now by 1917 it's estimated that women produced around 80% of all munitions. Also in transport women worked as conductresses, drivers on buses, trams and underground trains and between 1914 and 1918 this is the start and the end of the first world war. Two million women replaced men in employment, do bear in mind of course the men they replaced were the men who entered up serving at war as soldiers and this of course this replacement resulted in an increase in the number of women in total employment from 24% of women in July 1914 to 37% by November 1918 by the end of the war. Now of course by 1918 the first world war ended and the representation of the People Act ended up being passed and this allowed women over the age of 30 with five pounds worth of property to vote and that therefore meant two thirds of women UK population ended up being able to vote. Also of course this representation of the People Act was extended to men who were excluded from previous privileges so it let men over 21 or 19 if they had served in the army vote and women with voting rights however according to this law which made it a limited law were really mainly upper class so in other words women who had over five pounds worth of property this restricted the women who could vote to mainly upper class women and of course these upper class women were over 30 years old. Now the women who got the vote and this is a major criticism of this act these women who were upper class mainly weren't necessarily the women who ended up working in war and especially serving in helping the war effort. Do bear in mind that it was in 1928 10 years later that women ended up getting the same voting rights as men. So that's all if you found this video useful do give it a thumbs up however if you didn't need any more information in order to support your studies of this area of history do make sure you visit our website which is www.firstreet tutors.com. Thank you so much for listening.