an issue on which the new House of Commons ought to be given an opportunity to express its views."
On the same day Sir Edward Grey, at Alnwick, reiterated his continued support of women's suffrage. In reply to a question, he said: "If that means, am I in favour of a reasonable Bill for giving votes to women, I have always supported that Bill, and I don't think it right to change my opinions because what I believe to be a small minority among women has been very violent and unreasonable." Mr. Winston Churchill, a few days earlier, expressed a similar opinion to that of Sir Edward Grey.
The anti-suffragists are never weary of asserting that women's suffrage has never been before the country as a practical political issue. It is difficult to imagine what being "before the country" consists in, if the foregoing declarations on the part of the leaders of the party in power do not indicate that a question has reached this stage. At the general election of January 1910, 245 candidates mentioned in their election addresses that they supported the extension of the Parliamentary franchise to women.[1] In this election the National Union organised a voters' petition in support of women's suffrage. The signatures, amounting to over 280,000, were nearly all collected on polling day from electors who had just recorded their own vote. In some constituencies, especially in the North of England, hardly a man refused his signature; the polling number was in each case attached to the signature as a means of identification, and as a guarantee of good faith. No objection has ever been made to our petitions, or signatures disallowed, as in the case of some of the anti-suffrage petitions, on the ground that there were pages of signatures all in the same handwriting.
An extremely important event in the development of the suffrage movement in the field of practical politics took place almost simultaneously with the January 1910 election. This was the formation of the Conciliation
- ↑ See the Annual Report of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies presented in March 1910.
