Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847 – 1929) was a leading Suffragist and campaigner for equal rights for women. She led the biggest suffrage organisation, the non-violent (NUWSS) from 1890-1919 and played a key role in gaining women the vote. Reflecting her passion for education, she helped to found Newnham College, Cambridge. She also engaged in other political activities such as supporting worker rights and overcoming laws which were based on a dual morality for men and women.
Millicent campaigning
Millicent Garrett was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1846 to a businessman and his wife. When she was twelve, Millicent was sent to London, with her sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (the first female doctor in the UK) to study at a private boarding school in Blackheath.
It was in 1865 that Millicent’s sister Louisa, and Louisa’s husband James, took her to hear a speech by MP John Stuart Mill, who was arguing for the vote to be extended to working men and to women. Millicent wrote:
‘I cannot say I became a suffragist, I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government’.
Millicent Garrett was just 19 years old when, in 1866, she collected names on a petition seeking the vote for women. At 22, she gave her first speech.
One of Mill’s supporters was Liberal politician Henry Fawcett, who proposed to Millicent in 1866. They married the following year. In 1868 Millicent joined the London Suffrage Committee, and by the early 1880s was a leader of the movement.
In 1884, Henry Fawcett was taken ill, while serving in William Gladstones’ Liberal government as postmaster general. He died of pleurisy on 6th November 1884. After her husband’s death, she devoted more of her time to political campaigning and in 1890, she was elected President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) which was the largest group campaigning for women to receive the vote.
In 1897, local women’s suffrage societies united as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, under Millicent, who was president until 1919. By 1913, the NUWSS had 50,000 members, the suffragists opting for peaceful tactics such as marching and lobbying decision-makers.
That year, she was awarded a brooch engraved with “For Steadfastness and Courage”.
Millicent was a suffragist, meaning she employed more peaceful tactics than her suffragette sisters. The colours of her suffragist movement were green, white and red which stood for Give Women Rights.
A big disappointment for the women’s suffrage movement was when the Liberal government refused to countenance giving women the vote during their period in office 1901-1914. This encouraged the more militant suffragettes to engage in direct action – breaking windows and, when sent to jail, taking part in hunger strikes. This willingness to resort to violence caused a deep divide in the women’s movement. Fawcett and the NUWSS remained committed to achieving the vote through constitutional means and argued that militancy was counter-productive. Although Fawcett admired the courage of the more militant WPSU members, she blamed the WPSU’s direct action for preventing the government voting on the issue. In 1912, fed up with the Liberal’s opposition to giving women the vote, the NUWSS supported the nascent Labour Party.
The First World War changed the social and political landscape. With women actively working in industry to support the war effort, there was a groundswell of opinion to give women the vote. In 1918, the ‘Qualification of Women Act’ was passed – giving women over the age of 30 the vote.
When parliament equalised the voting age in 1928, Millicent was there in Parliament to witness the fruits of her life’s work become a reality. She wrote:
“It is almost exactly 61 years ago since I heard John Stuart Mill introduce his suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill on May 20th, 1867. So I have had extraordinary good luck in having seen the struggle from the beginning.”
Millions of British women got the vote in 1918 (well, those aged over 30 and meeting certain conditions). We had to wait until 1928 before the Equal Franchise Act finally gave women the vote on the same terms as men.
Millicent was able to see her life goal achieved – she died on 5th August 1929, one year after all British women over the age of 21 were given the right to vote.
This year marks 100 years since the Representation of the People Act, which gave British women the right to vote.
What better way to start the celebrations than to remember the women who led the fight, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the leader of the suffrage movement. She will be the first woman commemorated with a statue in Parliament Square.
Millicent Fawcett not only led The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in its peaceful campaigning for women’s suffrage, but also campaigned against slavery, investigated the conditions of concentration camps during the Boer War and co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge in 1871; her daughter, Phillipa would later attend the college.
Soon a bronze statue of her will be unveiled in London. It will stand among 11 men, such as Prime Minsters Sir Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli, and international figures Nelson Mandela and Gandhi.
The statue’s designed by Gillian Wearing. Millicent has a placard saying “Courage calls to courage everywhere” – a reference to a speech she made following the death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davidson, killed by a horse at the Epsom Derby.
Dame Millicent is shown as a 50-year-old – her age when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was founded. Around the plinth are the images and names of 52 women (plus a couple of men) who also fought for the vote.
Jerusalem
In 1916 the British composer Hubert Parry wrote a song that has become England’s unofficial National Anthem, and synonymous with some of the Royal Albert Hall’s most celebrated events – Jerusalem.
In 1918, Hubert Parry conducted the song for Millicent Fawcett and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies at a meeting in the Queen’s Hall. He received a letter from Millicent Fawcett the next day stating that – ‘your Jerusalem ought to be made the Women Voters’ Hymn.’ Parry agreed and Parry re-assigned copyright to Mrs Fawcett and the NUWSSand it was sung at suffrage meetings until all women achieved the vote in 1928.
By singing Jerusalem the WI is marking its links with the wider women’s movement, and its commitment to improving the conditions of rural life.
Though Millicent died in 1929, her spirit endures. The London Society for Women’s Suffrage was renamed The Fawcett Society in 1953.
Minty Day
During the filming of the Great British Menu to celebrate the NFWI centenary in 2015 our own Minty Day was interviewed in the Houses of Parliament telling us all her great, great aunt, Millicent, Garrett Fawcett’s story