Why do we never talk about how men got the right vote?

Everybody in this country is taught from infancy that the Suffragettes had to wrest votes for women from a brutal male establishment that was protecting the monopoly exercised by all men. My daughters learned that lesson at primary school before they had even been introduced to the cardinal beliefs of the world’s leading religions.

As a matter of fact, men did have to fight before all men could get the vote. And men’s fight was not conducted in debating halls, demonstrations and salons, nor even from the relative safety of the prison cell. Before all British men were allowed to vote, poor young men had to be wounded in millions and to die in hundreds of thousands in a war from which all women were exempted solely by reason of their gender.

Without any voice in the matter, therefore, every adult male was, from that moment, subject to military law. If he didn’t go quietly (most did, of course) he could be forcibly removed from his home and transported to the front where, if he protested that he couldn’t see any sense in that insane conflict, he might be subjected to a cursory field court martial and executed by firing squad.

Guess what? Most of the propertyless, working-class men who then suffered in the mud and were blown to shreds in some of the most gruesome carnage in human history had no right to vote. One of them was my own uncle Tom - a working-class private soldier conscripted at Christmas 1917 at the age of 18 and killed in battle at Cachy on the Somme on April 24, 1918. Nothing identifiable remained of him to bury.

Roughly 60pc of adult men were then entitled to vote.

The reason is that the whole truth is extremely inconvenient. It conflicts with the dominant feminist narrative which portrays women as the victims of repressive men, from whom liberation and progress had to be wrested by militant uprising.

In August 1914, at the start of the First World War, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald founded the Order of the White Feather with support from the prominent author Mrs Humphrey Ward. The organization aimed to shame men into enlisting in the British Army by persuading women to present them with a white feather if they were not wearing a uniform.

This was joined by prominent feminists and suffragettes of the time, such as Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel. They, in addition to handing out the feathers, also lobbied to institute an involuntary universal draft, which included those who lacked votes due to being too young or not owning property

One such was Private Ernest Atkins who was on leave from the Western Front. He was riding a tram when he was presented with a white feather by a girl sitting behind him. He smacked her across the face with his pay book saying: "Certainly I'll take your feather back to the boys at Passchendaele. I'm in civvies because people think my uniform might be lousy, but if I had it on I wouldn't be half as lousy as you."

Hmmm maybe it's because men gave themselves the right to vote since voting first began, so there's really nothing to discuss.

Hmmm maybe it's because men gave themselves the right to vote since voting first began, so there's really nothing to discuss.

Actually, the majority of men couldn't vote in Great Britain until 1867, and (if you'd read the article) you'd know that it wasn't until 1918 that all men earned the right to vote (until then 40% still couldn't). These men were expected and required to fight and die for their country. Women, however, were not, but were given the right to vote ten years later in spite of this. Women winning the right to vote was indeed a good thing, but this often overshadows the suffrage of men not long before them. Few people even know this, which is why it's worthy of discussion.

I would assume the male struggle for autonomy and the right to vote is discussed far less because approximately 75% of women had to wait a decade longer for that same right; therefore, the male struggle is usually reduced to little more than an afterthought. What many don't realise is that all men didn't have the right to vote until 1918 (in contrast to 1928 for all women) which leads to the popular view that men as a whole oppressed women and their civil rights. In reality, prior to 1918, the UK was something of a plutocracy dominated by the wealthy upper class.

Universal suffrage was hard fought for by men and women. Neither sex should be blaming the other for the delay in their civil rights because ultimately, the rich upper class elite were the ones responsible for it. Yes, the vast majority would have been men, but that's not to say men as a whole are, or should be considered, responsible for women's rights being delivered later than men's.

Women were not allowed to fight. Should we have conscipted women to fight in WW2 so they could "earn" the right to vote?

To be strictly accurate, men did retain sole right to vote, for over half a millenia. Yes it was only some men, but they still had a great deal more control over the matter.

Why do feminists talk much more about women's suffrage? Because the difference in voting right between the genders throughout centuries of UK history is both indicative of and due to inequality between the sexes.

Male suffrage was not a gender issue, it was/is an issue of wealth and privelidge. The centuries of injustice in this regard does not alter the fact that it took even longer for the UK to go from accepting the rights of some men to vote to accepting the rights of any women to vote.

Let me state this clearly: it would be extremely naive to try and sum up history of voting rights in the UK as that of women being given the vote 10 years after men.

Oddly, however, women seemed quite content with not being subject to conscription and never campaigned for the privilege (I wonder why?). In fact, many of the suffragettes were quite active in pressuring young men into fighting (men who also didn't have the right to vote, but saw no similar support from the suffragettes on the matter).

Was female suffrage a gender issue? Yes. But regardless, it wasn't because men got the right to vote simply for being men in the years prior, but because they saw that they had the right as tax-paying citizens whom were expected to serve and die in the name of their country. Women, however, were not expected to perform this role, nor did they by enlarge, so it was the husband who cast the ballot.

Despite the significance of men's suffrage, and the fact that it eventually helped pave the way for women's suffrage, it is nearly always forgotten and overshadowed by the more popular and romanticized story of the suffragettes.

Hmmm maybe it's because men gave themselves the right to vote since voting first began, so there's really nothing to discuss.

Do you struggle with reading?

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Do you? I've already mentioned that he is, in fact, technically correct. Men did give themselves the vote from the very earliest beginnings of the voting system in Britain. They just didn't give it to all men.

I do struggle to read. I have the mental age of a newborn lamb.

I think it's your comprehension that you should be more concerned about.

You will be glad to know that I am not concerned in the slightest.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Look, let's not be children here...

Do you not see that regardless of how fairly men allocated votes amongst themselves, they did in fact exclude women? To say they discriminated against women AND men is misleading when more accurately they discriminated against women and the poor.

Both men and women were discriminated against but each for different reasons.

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