Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/19

 the way, may help to account for Mr. Chamberlain's anti-suffragist opinions. Working women, who feel more severely than any one else the pressure of indirect taxation, could not be indifferent to proposals to tax without their consent the bread and meat for which they have such a struggle to pay. Mr. Chamberlain's campaign, then, had the unexpected effect of stimulating the demand for the franchise among the working women of Lancashire and Cheshire. The Labour Representation Movement was then making rapid headway, and Mr. Shackleton, the member for Clitheroe, found himself in the unique position of depending for his election and other expenses, in the main, on the subscriptions of women Trades Unionists. Naturally the women insisted on having a candidate favourable to their views, and Mr. Shackleton came to Parliament pledged to attend to the demands of the majority of his union.

Yet strong as Mr. Shackleton and others may be on the subject, the vicious atmosphere of British politics already alluded to affects even many of the Labour Party. It is next to impossible for the politician, however conscientious, to keep ever in his eye the needs of a non-voting class. No "interest" with votes behind it will ever be ignored altogether, and those who have felt deeply the falsity of one-sex politics will realise how hard a battle must sometimes be fought even among those theoretically in favour of universal suffrage. The Lancashire women are too keenly alive to the importance of the question to be entirely content with any party not wholly under