Casting The Vote

The marking of 2018 centenary for when the first women were eligible to vote has been dominated by the claims that the Suffragette group of women devoted to violent action etc. are the ones to thank. As so much of the "history" is drawn from the media of the time it is not surprising, it is easy to source and to deal with.

One large group of women who were felt to deserve the vote were those who between 1914 and 1918 went into the factories and service industries to take the place of men who had joined the Army and Navy. There were others as well who deserved it.

When young I knew a number of people born in the period 1860 to 1890 who were adults during the time of the Suffragettes. In those times past people used to talk to each personally about all sorts of things. It was always interesting to hear of their pasts. It does not make me a primary source perhaps but it does give some insights.

One lady I knew well, see above, from an ordinary working family was highly convent educated, multi lingual and a governess to families of high standing. She was stranded behind the German lines on the invasion of 1914 and during the war worked for French intelligence. Other women in her family were educated and became head teachers of elementary schools etc..

In their communities they became active in the advancement of the young in education and learning and in reform in general for the betterment of the labouring class. In 1940 they were responsible for working to help the French stranded in England and were thanked by De Gaulle.

The Liberal Government coming to power in 1906 had a lot to deal with. The Lord Salisbury Conservatives had made some reforms but there were too many problems to be dealt with in too little time, given the difficulties in the mining and other industrial areas, rapid economic change, the imbalances in the constitution, the radical changes in foreign policy and the demands of Empire.

In 1882 Gladstone on taking office said that it was his mission to pacify Ireland. He failed to and by 1914 the problems had increased and become more complicated. He also fudged The Egypt Question that led the UK into more liabilities. The 1884 Electoral Reform Act had been a compromise that created more problems than it solved, none of which has been dealt with by 1914 when this may have been on the long list to be addressed; not least because of the reform of local government.

There were high level pressing issues especially in Ireland. Before 1911 the Liberal Government had real problems. In the Tory House of Lords about two hundred peers could paralyse the Liberal Government. They attempted this with Lloyd George's Peoples' Budget of 1909. The reality before then was that the Lords would block a franchise bill giving the vote to the labouring class of men and to women, even the highly educated and property owners.

It took a lot of time and politics to deal with the problem of the House of Lords and in the meantime the activist and violent suffragettes fouled the nest. In attacking the government and members of the House of Commons they were alienating people who might have wanted to give the votes to women.

Similarly, out there in local communities, sensible, responsible and educated women working and housewives, busy in their churches and home areas and some at national level who wished to vote but under no circumstances wanted to be tarred with the Suffragette brush and its violence. They became a silent majority.

One reason is clear. The open London of the day had become home to numbers of extremists, anarchists and others. There is the famous coverage of Churchill at the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911 (see Wikipedia) as police and army fought on the streets to deal with anarchists in alliance with criminals who defied law and order.

By 1911, Lloyd George had finally managed to have his budget passed, and the House of Lords had been taught a lesson. So what new reforms could have been put forward that year? The extension of the franchise might have been one of them. It would be difficult to give it to the men labourers while excluding women entirely.

But this was no longer a simple matter of right or justice or fairness or a straightforward next step in progress. In the minds of most people, the Suffragettes had become linked to the anarchists from Eastern Europe, revolutionaries and the criminal gangs that had come to take over some of the poorest districts of the large cities.

Did Lenin when in London in 1908 ever take tea with the Pankhurst's or any of their friends? Look at the "Workers Socialist Federation" in Wikipedia for some interesting reading on this part of political history that seems to be forgotten.

Read All About It

BBC News

Saturday 10 February 2018 

Headline:

John McDonnell: Labour public ownership plan will cost nothing

From text:

Earlier, Mr McDonnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme taking services into public ownership would not ultimately increase the burden on taxpayers because government bonds could be swapped for shares in a revenue-producing company.

Mr McDonnell said utilities could be managed more efficiently under public ownership, because they would no longer have to fund dividends for shareholders.

And:

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"I want to break the stigma of painful sex"

Times Past Present And Future

This is a repeat of a post from February 2010 and may still be of interest.

Something cropped up which sent me round the web again in search of the past.  The locations involved and the period meant that William Cobbett’s “Rural Rides” was worth re-reading. In 1823 when riding in Sussex and Kent he observed a number of oddities.

It was that the roads were much improved but the farmers were poorer.  Moreover, many of the fields and gardens were not as well tended as he would have expected. It was explained to him that the farmers could not afford to pay the labourers.

Cobbett realized that the local property and other taxes imposed on the farmers to provide Parish Relief for unemployed labourers was the major factor. The men on relief were then obliged to work on the local roads to earn their pittance.

This was the infamous “Speenhamland” system of the period the problems of which led to the creation of many workhouses and the Poor Law Act of 1834 extending the workhouse system across the country.

Another matter caught his attention.  It was that the plump rosy cheeked young women talking of “getting a house” rather than finding a husband. This was their way out of their parent’s family, which meant unpaid service and avoiding either domestic service elsewhere or low paid employment.

But to get a house you had to get a man.  It seems from other sources that the conventional means was to get with child by a likely lad from which marriage would often but not always follow.

In 1821/22 the Rev. J. Monkhouse wrote in the Parish Register of Bramshott, “Of 72 marriages in the last 10 years ending 1820, not less than 69 females have been unchaste before marriage. Those who gain husbands are more fortunate than those who bear bastards, but not more virtuous."

Even those with bastards might get another man if one was willing and so a house and the parish relief. Bramshott is a little way from the Selborne of Gilbert White where the later Fitt family at the Priory Farm supplied a number of bastards.  Also, it is near to the Chawton of Jane Austen.

In 1825 during yet another of the recurrent financial busts of the period, the Duke of Wellington observed that the nation was only days away from barter; that is where the money supply had disappeared from circulation altogether, neither quantity nor velocity were to be found.

The essential problem was that with a system depending on the quantity of gold and silver a rate of population increase in excess of the increase in their supply meant inherent deflation; much as a rate of population increase higher than the rate increase of real GDP today engenders low wages and unemployment. This was relieved only by local credit systems and banks issuing their own notes, leveraging their gold holdings.

When too much of this paper fiat currency had been issued a lot of banks went wrong or bad and when that happened everyone wanted gold and there was nowhere near enough to be had. This might happen after a bad harvest which sent corn prices up.

Because the money system did not allow too much in the way of rises the effect was then deflation for the prices of other goods, services, and labour. Work was hard to find, food was at higher relative cost, poorer and even middling families crowded into the available buildings and welfare systems all but collapsed.

All this culminated in considerable disorder and political upheaval around 1830 in Britain and Europe.  Captain Swing was about the country. Near Bramshott at Headley men from there and Selborne were given free passage to Australia after burning their local workhouse down.

King George IV and his fellow Royal Dukes did their best for the economy in an early form of quantatitive easing on the basis of large sums of unfunded debt underwritten by the taxpayer. The Brighton Pavilion and other arts ventures are their heritage, as are the maintenance and repair costs.

Their efforts were little appreciated by the population at large who had begun to develop a healthy contempt for the upper classes and were beginning to demand an end to corruption and rule by a self regarding elite using the system for their own benefit.

The lifestyle, greed and lack of moral compass of their rulers offended both those with serious religious convictions and those attempting to keep their farms and businesses functioning.

Some figures from the USA are interesting in this context.  During the American Rebellion 1776-1783 it is calculated that around 20% of Americans were Loyalist, that is believing in the Crown and British Government.

Recent polls now suggest in the USA that only around 20% of the present population believes that the Federal Government truly represents them and their interests, the future could be interesting. What is the equivalent figure for the UK?  In my view a figure of anything under 30% believing in our system and falling means we are headed for problems.

In the last couple of generations we have been persuaded to believe we could have ever improving lifestyles, access to bigger and better consumer goods and housing space, cheap fuel and food and all of us can fly anywhere and everywhere for pure fun.

If few of us now have much confidence in our system what happens when all the lifestyle fuses blow?  I can recall a very different world for the mass of the people and that is where we are headed now in real wealth terms.

It does not take much scratching round census returns and available information about the pre 1914 generations to tell us that our present Western world would have been incredible to them as it is to most of the world’s population at present.

In some respects we are already close to the world of William Cobbett. In his time neither government nor the economists had any real answer.

Things are going to change, but how, why, and to what effect we shall just have to see.

The Last Of The Line

The Royal Collection has in addition to a great deal of great and not so great art, etchings and drawings, but from the early years of photography, expensive enough in the late 19th Century to be an art form, and a number of items that caught the Imperial eye of HM Queen Victoria.

The picture above is a striking example. Taken on 7th June 1880 it is of the five living veterans of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo who were "in pensioners" of the Chelsea Hospital. Probably also there were "out" ones living here and there and other veterans, not pensioners and doubtless a few unknown at the time.

It is difficult to know which to look at first, but perhaps starting with the saddest story, Benjamin Bumstead, from Kent born 1797, of the 73rd Regiment of Foot, this would have been the 2nd Battalion. Wikipedia says that " The battalion fought in the Battle of Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815 where they lost 53 men killed and wounded.

Two days later at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, the regiment was charged by French Cavalry no less than 11 times during the battle and bombarded by French artillery. It remained in square without breaking. The battalion lost 6 officers and 225 men killed and wounded."

By 1841 he is back in Kent married to a Jane and a labourer, and they have two children. Two years later she moves in with a William Edwards, has more children and by 1851 Benjamin is in the Workhouse. In 1861 there is no record of him, but in 1871 he is again in the Workhouse. He says he is unmarried but there has never been a divorce. It is not difficult to imagine that by his late 40's he was a broken man.

For Robert Norton, the picture creates a problem. He is shown as having served with the 34th Regiment of Foot, when in fact it was the 54th West Norfolk Regiment of Foot. His death on 28 July 1881 was widely reported in the local press in Norfolk. The shifts and reorganisations of regiments during the 19th Century could lead to confusion later.

The regiment seems to have had a relatively minor role at the battle and perhaps the lack of a real study of its history in the 19th Century means that not enough is known. By 1841 Robert is back in Norwich and working as a silk weaver. He seems to have been a political activist. The Norwich Mercury in 1881 says that he was an ardent politician and never failing attendant at political meetings. The weavers in that day and age had a reputation for militancy.

Sampson/Samson Webb, who served with the 3rd Foot Guards, the Scots might be thought to be Scots, but regiments could pick up recruits anywhere in their travels and did. He was born in Ludlow, Shropshire and returned to Shrewsbury after his service.

He married a Wiltshire girl, Rachel Attwood, and their first son was born at Westminster around 1831 suggesting that his battalion was on public duties. The second son was born three years later at Ludlow. In 1851 he is listed as a Sergeant in the Militia, still Army. By 1861 he is a furniture polisher and Chelsea Out Pensioner. Rachel died in 1869 and not long after becomes an "In".

There was a Scotsman in the picture, however, John McKay of the 42nd Regiment of Foot. Better known as The Black Watch this was one of the finest regiments of the British and for that matter any army in history. I confess a slight prejudice, an ancestor served with them in the Peninsular War, but did not make it to Waterloo.

This article deals with him:

A Waterloo Man - Private John McKay, 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot by Andrew Thornton

John McKay attested for the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot at Caithness on 25 February 1810, aged 15. He fought at Quatre Bras and was wounded at Waterloo. John continued to serve with the 42nd Foot until he was discharged on 22 November 1837, having also seen service in France, Gibraltar, Malta and at home stations.

He married in 1831 and he and his wife Harriott had two sons. Later admitted as an In-Pensioner at the Royal Hospital, John was one of the last surviving veterans of Waterloo. The Edinburgh Evening News published the following article about him in their 12 April 1886 edition: A WATERLOO VETERAN: “The last survivor of Waterloo in Chelsea Hospital, John Mackay (sic), who fought in the ranks of the 42d Highlanders, enjoys excellent health and is generally in good spirits.

There is, according to the Army and Navy Gazette, little reason to doubt that this sturdy Scot is actually 103 years old. He is a broad-shouldered, big-chested man, below middle height, and is still fairly erect. The old boy seldom gets up now, not from debility, but because he is getting fat and lazy. He likes his pipe and his glass, and occasionally sings a little song after a fashion.

His memory is rather “mixed,” but otherwise he is wonderfully well.” John’s good health was not to last and he died on 7 July 1886. His death was widely reported, this article being printed in The York Herald on 10 July 1886: A WATERLOO VETERAN. “An old Waterloo veteran, John McKay, late 42nd Highlanders, died on Wednesday last at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

He was in his 102nd year. He was wounded in the hand, in the leg, and in the face at Waterloo. He was a cheery old man and was well up to a few days ago, when he was struck by paralysis.” John McKay was buried at the West London and Westminster Cemetery in Old Brompton on 9 July 1886.

Unquote.

The Army and Navy Gazette of 10 July 1886 has a major item on his death and points out that there were three of that name with the 42nd at Waterloo and he was certainly one, and injured in the hand and leg.

He was five foot five and three quarter inches tall and described as big. One source says he was attested, that is signed on in Caithness, but if he was a labourer after leaving the army it would be difficult to track him through the Census returns, possibly in Scotland.

An irony of the Gazette report is that after the McKay piece a couple of items down it lists regiments that are going to India for a tour of duty. One is the 7th Hussars, see Hannay next.

Last and not least is Naish Hannay, or Nash Hanney etc. for whom there is a full run of Census Returns from 1841 to 1881. He was a boy from Bath in Somerset, in 1808 apprenticed to Thomas Halliday to be a joiner. Soon after he joined the Army instead, the 7th Dragoons/Hussars needing to do some active recruiting. He was not long in the Army marrying Susannah Daw in 1818, a local girl.

Their locations are Walcot and Lyncombe, then villages on the edge of Bath, but by the end of the 19th Century becoming suburbs. In 1841 he is a porter, 1851 a cabinet maker, in 1861 again a porter and in 1871 up a notch to be an auctioneers porter. Susannah died in 1864, he was granted an out pension in 1867 and then became an in pensioner in 1877 and died in 1881 being buried at Brompton. It seems ordinary but it is the Bath that has interest.

Because when he was growing up in Bath and its area the Austen family were there as was Mrs. Piozzi. She had been Mrs. Hester Thrale and was born a Salusbury. She was a leading light in the world of literature and the arts, close to Dr. Samuel Johnson and all his circle. As for the Austen family, did Jane ever bump into that scruffy little boy destined to be a cabinet maker? Did Mrs. Piozzi ever send him on errands?

The question in my mind is the surname. One of the heroic figures in John Buchan's works is the Richard Hannay of "The 39 Steps". How did he come by that name? GB Shaw famously borrowed his gardener's name for "Pygmalion". Can there be a connection?

The difficulty with a study of this kind, is once some links are found in turn they lead to other links in a complex web. There was time when the Austen's visited Kent and were just along the road from where Benjamin Bumstead was born.

My last comment is that John McKay and Sampson Webb were both at the Battle of Salamanca in Spain. This was a crucial battle and possibly the turning point of that campaign and some think the beginning of the end for Napoleon. Wellesley, the victor of Waterloo and later the Duke of Wellington was up on the hills watching the counter marching of the armies.

Then he saw a gap open up in the French line of march and seized the moment for the British to attack. Without that moment there might never have been a Waterloo. 

Slap On The Paint

There has been a slew of art programmes on TV recently, mostly from the past now digitised and stitched together in allegedly new features. A bit of cut and paste here and a bit of cut and paste there as possibly Renoir said to his models.

But this is not about critical analysis. We have been watching art coverage on TV now for fifty years and have seen it before. And we are grateful for it, because when carting around the continent with the tent and trailer somehow or other we pitched up at a lot of places associated with artists of the past.

Bombing down the Autoroute it was hard to keep the eyes on the road when you had a clear view of the Mont St. Victoire of Cezanne. Arles was something special. A stay at Pont Aven, then unknown to us literally opened the eyes. This could go on a lot.

The thing that does jar is when a programme is fronted by a bossy, noisy presenter who tries to make it simple and ends up over explaining and filling in with this and that which do not really matter. A case in point is Andrew Graham-Dixon.

One thing that has changed a great deal is that in our 21st Century of money rules all, these days lot of the incidental chat and worth assessment of the art is about the prices. In the series now running on The Royal Collection we get a work of beauty and interest only to have his gurning face giving past and current prices.

Inevitably, the interest is centred on items which cost the Royal buyer of the past hundreds or just into thousands now worth multi millions. If AGD were let loose at the Treasury he would be buying by the cart load claiming public sector expenditure and increasing values. 

There are just a couple of problems. One is who knows what will be fashionable or not in the future? Will antique football programmes be the thing in the year 2318? The other is the putative figures quoted. As any weary economist knows, value then and now depends on the criteria you adopt and the art world is not a mass industry.

Also, the Royal Collection is housed in palaces, other major buildings, and in places where expensive care is necessary. There are curators, restorers and many other employees involved in maintaining and protecting the collection. How much has this lot cost down the centuries? The reason I bought a Ford instead of a Ferrari was the insurance and service costs, never mind the price.

There is also the terrible risk of what could happen. The going and return of a painting of nymphs by Waterhouse at Manchester is an early example. The "ists" may well be soon after the art. Not to sell it but to ban it, deface it or even destroy it because it depicts life and history as we are told to forget it.

It has happened before. In the age of the Tudors the art and decoration of the Medieval Ages was destroyed, painted over or sold off as a new faith replaced the old. Not so long after, Cromwell, short of the readies went for the Royal Collection of the time to sell or offer as security for debts, as well as getting rid of some that were theologically incorrect.

Around the world there have not been simply losses or time taking its toll there has often been outright destruction by the various thought polices of their time and place. You may be able to think of a few where this has happened or more to the point where it can or will happen.

But if only our parents had spent a few quid on some of those odd looking works of L.S. Lowry of places we knew.

The Rifles Of The Empire

The little-known story of how Liverpool men were ready with their guns and bayonets when the Zulus charged at Rorke's Drift can now be told. From the safety of their lounge chairs, millions of TV viewers have heard the thunder of Zulus beating their hide shields with assegais in the 1964 film "Zulu" starring Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and Jack Hawkins.

But even now there is a sense of wonder at how soldiers besieged in the mission house, reply to the native war chant with their own song, Men of Harlech. It is enough to bring tears to the eyes of any seasoned patriot of Wales.

But shouldn't those brave red-coated soldiers have been singing "Maggie May" or some shanty from the Liverpool docks? A book details the part played by men from Merseyside and other parts of the North West in the epic defence of Rorke's Drift.

Our troops stood alone on January 22, 1879, hours after a British force of at least 800 soldiers, supported by hundreds of native levies, had been destroyed by Zulu warriors drawn from the army of some 8,000 assembled by King Cetawayo.

Liverpool's Daily Post was among those reporting events from the Transvaal with mounting concern. The Afrikaners in the area had requested British help to check the Zulus and their fearless impis (regiments).

But Cetawayo imperiously dismissed the British demand that he should disband his army and accept our sovereignty over his kingdom. Instead, he attacked the slumbering British army of Lord Chelmsford at Isandlwana.

Communications took much longer then, even in the mighty British Empire. But on February 12 came the despatch that chilled the nation. "A British Column Annihilated," ran the Post's headline. It would have been read by with foreboding by the families and friends of Liverpudlians serving with the 24th Regiment in the region.

Twenty one of those who had enrolled in the city were killed. Nine men from Manchester were killed, four from Ashton-under-Lyme, four from Burnley, three from Preston and one from Wigan.

Queen Victoria and her Government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, and ordinary men and women were shocked to learn that a modern, well-equipped army could be routed by what had regarded as a primitive people. But the Zulus had been badly under-estimated. A victory was needed and needed quickly to redress the balance, so the "spin doctors" of the day could turn disaster into triumph.

It came about eight miles away at Rorke's Drift. Flushed with success, having washed their spears in blood, the Zulu's felt they could quickly rub out this missionary outpost, where there was also a supply base and a hospital. It was being defended that day and night by 155 men, of whom 36 were sick or wounded.

All were under the command of Lt John Rouse Merriott Chard of the Royal Engineers, who had been sent there to work on the Buffalo River, and Lt Gonville Bromhead i/c a detachment of men of the 24th Regiment of Foot. Crucially, these men at Rorke's Drift had Martini Henry rifles which could fire 20 rounds a minute in ideal conditions, accurately up to 400 yards. The assegai, a terrible weapon in hand-to-hand combat, couldn't match that.

Among the marksmen were men from Liverpool: James Ashton; Thomas Buckley, Thomas Burke, Patrick Kears, Augustus Morris, Frederick Morris, Robert Norris and Peter Sawyer. All were to receive the South Africa Medal 1877-78 and the 1879 clasps. Most also received an address from the Mayor of Durban, expressing "admiration and gratitude".

Eleven members of the garrison were awarded VCs, leading some modern historians to wonder whether the battle had been glorified to deflect attention from the defeat at Isandlwana. Whatever the truth of that, there is no doubt that most defenders conducted themselves with bravery.

Seventeen died and many more were wounded. But our loss was tiny compared to that of the Zulus, whose bodies piled up in hundreds behind the walls and mealie bags. In a letter to his wife, Sergeant George Smith, refers to a Mr James Dalton, who was parading the scene urging, the troops to "pot the fellows".

In the film emphasis is laid on the Welshness of the defenders. The list of those awarded the VC was read by Richard Burton from Pontrhydfen. Confusion might have arisen from the fact that the 24th Regiment had moved its headquarters from Birmingham to Brecon in 1873, but the 2nd battalion, the Warwickshire's (the men at Rorke's Drift), did not take the name the South Wales Borderers until 1881.

Private Burke was typical of the tough, unyielding men, who built and protected a great empire. At Rorke's Drift, he did his duty, no more and no less. After that, bouts of venereal disease and dyspepsia suggested that he enjoyed the company of the bottle and women in about equal measure. Although he later reached the rank of sergeant with the Liverpool King's Regiment, he was demoted at least once for drunken behaviour.

On leaving the Army in 1897, Burke married Honora Lambert. They had three children and moved to Wellesley Road, Toxteth. He was appointed landlord of the Crown Vaults pub in Park Road. He died in 1925, aged 64, leaving more than £14,000, a goodly fortune then. A rededication service was held at his graveside at Ford Cemetery, Litherland, on July 7 2002, by the 1879 Group set up to commemorate Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift.

Some fared less well. Thomas Buckley was living in a hostel in Liverpool at the time of his death, having either lost of sold his medals. However, shortly before his death, replacements were issued for him to wear at a veterans' reunion in Gateshead. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Anfield Cemetery in 1934.

Jim Bancroft has always been fascinated by military history and has written a series of illustrated books called "Local Heroes", covering the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Boer War. Now he has added Rorke's Drift.

"Most of the rank and file soldiers were rough and ready lads from the coal-mining, docks and cotton-manufacturing community in an around the tough city slums," he says. "Their only alternative to the highly-disciplined life in the British Army was a precarious environment and drudgery.

This combination, and their staunch loyalty to their unit, made them equally formidable fighters and a rifle in their hands gave them the advantage."

Thirty five years later their successors stopped The German Kaiser in Belgium. The picture above is of John Williams, whose real name was Fielding and Henry Hook on the right, whose depiction in the film is a travesty. In a previous post his later career as a senior attendant at the British Museum library is mentioned.

How much help, I wonder, rather later, did he give to the Russian, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin?

Voting For Voters

The National Archive have an Event on Tuesday 20 February for £10 at 1800-19:30 at Kew titled "Did militancy help or hinder the fight for the franchise?".

It says: "By 1912, militancy associated with the Suffragette movement hit its peak, with regular arson attacks and targeting of MPs’ houses. But did these tactics help or hinder the cause?" The debate will be with Dr. Fern Riddell, Elizabeth Crawford and Professor Krista Cowman.

This year is the centenary of the 1918 Act which first gave older women the parliamentary vote and to which attention will be devoted. I suspect little or nothing will be mentioned about the extension of the franchise to the 40% of men who did not have it, like my grandfather.

The importance of this was that it brought into the polling booths a great many voters for the Labour Party, who then supplanted the Liberals as the alternative to the Conservative Party. In theory the Labour Party ought to have become the rulers forever by a long way, but as it happened enough enfranchised women preferred the Tories.

Once the Gladstone Liberal government had passed the 1884 Reform Act which enabled 60% of men to vote, the nature of the population distribution and demographic structure meant it was inevitable that the franchise should be extended further.  Quite why it took so long is a complicated question.

Perhaps it begins with Gladstone, who hung on too long, and The Irish Question which dominated politics. Also, there was the sheer scale of all the difficulties of The Empire as well as the growing  European concerns. There was too much going on for a divided Parliament to deal with effectively.

Did the elements on the Left and the Pankhurst's poison the debate in a way that deterred many politicians, reformist or not, of the Centre from touching the subject? It allowed troublemakers in the House of Lords to make more trouble and this meant the issue of The Lords had to be dealt with first.

The statue erected in Leicester to the memory of Alice Hawkins, picture above, is a response and a case in point. She lived between 1863 and 1946 and was a leading suffragette closely associated with the Pankhurst's and that part of the movement given to violence, arrest and imprisonment.

Alice, born Riley, and a shoe machinist, in 1911 was one of those who demonstrated by refusing to take part in the Census of that year. But her husband did, and this was one of life's surprises, because fifty years later we were across the road from their address in 1911. He is listed as an invalid. Whether this was any illness or the result of breaking his leg when thrown out of a meeting in Bradford where Winston Churchill spoke and he heckled is not known.

By 1939 Alice was a widow, incapacitated and living a short distance away by the Welford Road in Leicester, a couple of bus stops from the Tiger's rugby ground and the hall where both Attlee and Churchill spoke, and the Filbert Street of Leicester City. City have since taken over what was once common ground for a new stadium.

She would have been pleased in the 20's and 30's to see the new schools for girls built by the local Council, grammar and secondary modern, and no stinting in the science and practical subjects. Also, the new University College was close, mixed and under an Attenborough as Principal. Did our David ever know about Alice down the road?

When archaeologists of a future millennia are digging around the habitations of our humanoid species of the 21st Century they will come across statues adjacent to large centres where many gathered. Probably, they will conclude that these were the major tribal leaders of our times.

Should anyone suggest that they were simply managers of some form of game being played at these places they will be regarded as being flippant and ignorant of the truths of history. The one certainty is that humans like their idolatry although our choices can change.

There is an irony in the story of Alice. She did time in prisons for the breaches of the law. But her family were not always factory workers. Before her father moved from Stafford to Leicester he had another job, he was a warder at the local gaol. I recall the shoe factories of the past.

We had one close by which sold off salesmen's examples or "seconds" with a fault in the leather or machining. They were a real bargain and kept me well shod at a low price. The ladies or "girls" on the machines were a strong minded lot who demanded respect.

No wonder the men wanted to keep the vote to themselves.