Ebook: Conservative Suffragists: The Women's Vote and the Tory Party (International Library of Political Studies)

One of the most significant gaps in our knowledge of modern British history is how the Conservative Party dealt with the controversial issue of the women's suffrage movement. While most suffrage studies focus on the activities of Liberal and Labour suffragettes in the fight for the parliamentary vote, the role of Conservative women in the suffrage movement is rarely considered in any detail and the attitude of the party towards their activities is generally thought to be of little interest. In this important reassessment of Conservative women's suffrage, Mitzi Auchterlonie examines new evidence enabling readers to understand the social, political, economic and imperial issues which most concerned Conservative suffragists. She reveals how Tory women played an important yet often invisible and under-researched part in the suffrage campaigns, while the Conservative Party itself contained an unexpectedly diverse range of views towards the idea of votes for women.