Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/82

 BY J. KEIR HARDIE, M.P.

HE only really remarkable thing about recent developments in the Women's Suffrage agitation is that they should have been so long in coming. For fifty years there has been a Women's Suffrage Party to which John Stuart Mill in his day lent his powerful and whole-hearted support. Whilst the franchise agitation which culminated in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 was being waged, the Women's Suffrage Movement was fairly vigorous, and for a time there seemed good prospects of its being successful; but with the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourers and the miners in 1884 the whole agitation connected with the franchise subsided, as did also the Women's Movement, which ceased to be a force in politics. The satisfying of the men's demands in 1884 left the women's claims unrecognised, and many of them foolishly deserted their own movement and became mere party politicians. The Primrose League on the one other, absorbed many of the active women politicians and, as a consequence, their claim for enfranchisement 78