Votes For Women, Censure Mr Asquith

Votes for Women, Censure Mr Asquith by Alfred Pearse, 1910

This poster was created in response to the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's suppression of the 1910 Conciliation Bill, which proposed extending the vote in Britain and Ireland to around one million wealthy, property-owning women.  

Alfred Pearse, born in 1825 in Paddington, London, studied at the West London School of Arts. He designed posters for the women's suffrage movement and drew a weekly cartoon for Votes for Women from 1909. He was also a founder member of the Suffrage Atelier - an artists' collective supporting women's suffrage.

He regularly had cartoons published in national magazines and papers, such as Punch and the Illustrated London News. Among his cartoons, he depicted the force feeding of suffragettes on hunger strike:

During World War One he produced art supporting the war effort. He died in London in 1933.

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Campaigns for suffrage in the UK, including the Chartist movement of the first half of the 19th Century, included calls to include women, but often these calls were swept aside, either temporarily as something to achieve once men’s suffrage had been achieved, or permanently as it was considered undesirable.

A Woman’s Suffrage Committee was formed in 1867 and from 1893 worked within the Independent Labour Party (ILP), aimed at securing votes for women. The NUWSS, formed in 1897.

The NUWSS was dedicated to winning women's suffrage through peaceful means, and focused on trying to get sympathetic MPs elected to Parliament. The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), split from the NUWSS in 1903 (when patience with the ILP had run out) and became known as the suffragettes, employing more militant tactics.

In the UK, before the start of the First World War, many Suffragettes were involved in a campaign of direct action, including bombing and arson, disruption and mass demonstrations. Suffragettes were often attacked and sexually assaulted by the police and special constables conscripted specifically for the purpose. Imprisoned Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were barbarically force fed. As their health deteriorated, they could be released and re-arrested when they were considered to have recovered enough.

At the outbreak of the war, the WSPU split as the majority decided to support the war effort. A significant group, including Sylvia Pankhurst, broke away, took a strong stance against the war and formed the East London Federation of Suffragettes. They published The Woman’s Dreadnought, which later became The Workers Dreadnought and was adopted as the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain.