Separate Spheres by Brian Harrison

Author:Brian Harrison [Harrison, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Social History, Modern, 20th Century, Reference, General
ISBN: 9781136248030
Google: 1_29zs0T1GMC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-02T15:55:25+00:00

8

SHIFTING PUBLIC OPINION

In discussing the League's methods, a beginning should perhaps be made with the areas where it was weakest; the analysis can then move forward to those areas where it was strong. Antis were inferior in their techniques of propaganda and they knew it. Like the Anti-League many years before, they competed only half-heartedly with their opponents in the conventional methods for influencing public opinion;1 they even at times made a virtue of their amateurism in this sphere. Fortunately for the League, by the time it had built up its organisation, the suffragettes had begun to damage theirs by adopting violent tactics which invited retaliation in kind – not only against themselves, but against the non-militant suffragists as well. Despite their propagandist amateurism, the balance of advantage even in publicity therefore began to shift towards the Antis shortly before the First World War.

There was an element of bluff in the branch structure of Victorian reforming movements. Serried ranks could be mobilised for the occasional big meeting or petition, but the branches seldom hummed with continuous activity. They usually centred on some energetic local personality and were galvanised into action only periodically. The League was no exception ; Ann Caulfield visited four branches in 1909 to collect petition signatures and found real effort being shown only by local branch officials: ‘when a meeting is held and a great lady presiding people may come to see her but that is all.’ Suffragists in their relatively beleaguered state had need of one another's company, especially in so far as they attracted the young unmarried woman, and it is probable that there was rather more vitality to suffragist branch life. There was a real sense of companionship within the suffragist movement; it was, as Rachel Ferguson humorously pointed out, ‘our Eton and Oxford, our regiment, our ship, our cricket match’.2 It was a companionship which the League could never rival, because its members found the conventional sources of community life for women quite adequate; their sense of community was therefore obtained outside the League. But a nation-wide branch structure was necessary for the League, if only for appearance's sake.

In September 1910 Cromer pointed out that there was little financial incentive for headquarters to encourage new branches, because this would transfer subscriptions hitherto made direct to headquarters to the local branch whose subsequent subsidy of headquarters would not compensate for the loss. None the less, later in the year meetings of the Branch Secretaries’ and Workers’ Committee were held fortnightly to exchange useful information, and subscribing membership rose from 9,000 in July 1909 to over 33,000 in July 1913. By April 1912, with 235 branches, the League had a good national coverage, apart from Ireland where the suffragists were also weak, and Wales, where the League soon began growing fast. During 1912 the Scottish section of the movement was reorganised and the Scottish committee (which had hitherto consisted largely of Unionist ladies) was reinforced to make it more representative.3

The small number of Girls’ Anti-Suffrage

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