ABSTRACT
Hardie’s pamphlet The Citizenship of Women: A Plea for Women’s Suffrage helps illustrate the divisions that had begun to emerge on the left regarding the extension of the suffrage. Hardie expressed his support for a Liberal MP’s private member’s bill – the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill which presented the less extensive demand – on the basis that it would enfranchise far more working-class than middle and upper-class women, and also because a bill for universal adult suffrage would have little chance of success, at least in the short term. In the light of Lord Brougham’s Act, if the Court of Queen’s Bench had to decide to-morrow on the construction of these clauses, they would be constrained to hold that they conferred the suffrage on female persons, as well as on males.” During the past few sessions of Parliament a measure has been introduced, originally at the instigation of the Independent Labour Party, having this for its object.
