ABSTRACT
G. D. H. Cole used to say, as a strong supporter of votes for women, that women ought to have the vote as a matter of socialist principle. The hardest women are more granite than hard men. Sex is no criterion of progress in politics. Half of our working woman-power consists of married women. An unknown number of single women workers come home to care for elderly dependants at the end of a long day. Politics is only one aspect of power, but in this anniversary flotsam it is bound to demand the most attention. In 1889 Beatrice Webb was among the signatories of a manifesto drafted by Mrs Humphry Ward against the political enfranchisement of women. There is no more difficult job to combine with motherhood - not impossible, as women like Judith Hart and Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher can demonstrate.
