Source Database

Section 26: The Vote Achieved

(26.1) In her book Memories of a Militant, Annie Kenney described the proposals to give women the vote.

In 1917 the question of granting the vote to women was discussed in Parliament. It was admitted by friend and foe that British women had played and were playing a unique part in the war… There was great rejoicing among all sections of women. What a relief to think that once peace was declared abroad peace on a modest scale would be declared at home. The agitation was at last drawing to a close…On February 6^th, 1918; Royal assent was given to the "Representation of the People Act." Women were voters.

And so my Suffrage pilgrimage was ended… I left the Movement, financially, as I joined it, penniless. Though I had no money I had reaped a rich harvest of joy, laughter, romance, companionship, and experience that no money can buy.

It is indeed wonderful when one wakes up in the morning to remember that now, at last, one is considered to be a real, complete human being! After thirty years of endeavor to make men understand they were only half the world… the price we have paid for our enfranchisement is too heavy, some of us find, to allow us to rejoice in the light-hearted, happy fashion we used to picture in old days, but we are filled with a deep and earnest thankfulness.

The women who fought for it – some giving their lives, others mutilated for life, others coming through after much suffering, all greater than mine – have won the victory now for women in Great Britain, and very soon in the four corners of the earth – in America, Canada, South Africa, in the other countries of Europe, in India (though very slowly, I fear, there), in China."

If it should happen… I am happy to die. If, as many people believe, we step into a higher life, but are again with loved companions who have died before, then it will be very good. Death to me is like a gentle lover…I am so tired of life, I should like to be taken in his sheltering arms and have an end… I have longed hoped to die, and since I’ve seen this possible road, I have felt most wonderfully happy. Of late years I have seen and felt much of the sad side of death – the separation from those we love. Now I see the joyful side – the release from bodily ills – and it is restful beyond all words.

Few things affected my whole vision of life more than her example. It made one ashamed of half-hearted faith, and of one’s cowardice. It set a standard, by which women felt they must measure themselves, and finding themselves wanting, felt that they must live more finely. That is what heroes and saints do for us, they lift up our standards of faith and achievement. I feel today the same deep impulse of gratitude and love that we felt in the dark days when she lay in prison for us.

Somehow I cannot think of the passing of such as your sister Constance with any sense of break – only of a sense of a great emergence into ampler freedom and activity… I don’t in the least care whether her actions were wise or foolish. I simply say she had a share in altering the world and shaping thought among women. Who could ask for a better epitaph?"

I have seen great days, but this is the greatest. I remember when we started twenty-one years ago, with empty coffers… I never believed that equal votes would come in my lifetime. But when an impossible dream comes true, we must go on to another. The true unity of men and women is one such dream. The end of war, of famine – they are all impossible dreams, but the dream must be dreamed until it takes a spiritual hold.

I have always believed in discontent – not grumbling, which is usually selfish and individual – but a disinclination to sit down idly, knowing things are wrong.

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