Why did the Liberal Government treat the Suffragettes in such a heavy-handed manner?

Question

1905 onwards

Answer 1

To them female emancipation seemed the natural outcome of the Liberal goal of removing artificial restrictions, expanding individual opportunity, and making government representative of all sections of society. According to Fawcett, opposition to enfranchising women was based on the fallacy that man possessed a superior kind of wisdom which enabled him to decide what was best for the other half of the human race.

However, relations between Liberals and women were complicated by friction over womens suffrage. Many Liberals assumed that a limited vote would enfranchise propertied women and thus give an advantage to the Conservatives. In addition, many Radical Liberals, including Joseph Chamberlain, John Bright and James Bryce, entertained profound doubts about female political instincts regardless of social class. But the greatest single obstacle was Gladstone himself. The suffragists blamed him for excluding women from the 1885 Reform Act.

Answer 2

The Government of Great Britain was a Liberal Government but the Home Secretary was a reformed Conservative, Winston Churchill, who saw the Pankhurst's Suffragettes as a threat to Britain.

Through the rest of his life he was never trusted by the liberals or the conservatives. He lived his political live on the outskirts of British Politics getting posts that men wouldn't take or that would go to men with a certain standing in the party. He got to be PM in WWII because the first choice was not acceptable to the King.

Answer 3

Men had kept (exploited) women in a subjugated role since the beginning of recorded history. They liked it that way and resisted anything that would change their comfort level. Allowing women to vote meant that men had to acknowledge that women had rights, minds capable of more than just frivolous thought, and were more than property or just silly grown up children. In short, nobody likes change and therefore they resist it.

Answer 4

They were an embarrassment, most liberals agreed that women should have the vote, however they also believed that women were essentially conservative in nature, if they gave women the vote the Liberals believed they would be handing power to the Conservative party.