g the coming session of
1912 the Electoral Reform Bill which he had foreshadowed in 1908; he
said that in this Bill all existing franchises would be swept away,
plural voting abolished and the period of residence reduced. The new
franchise to be created was, he added, to be based on citizenship and
votes were to be given to "citizens of full age and competent
understanding," but no mention was made of the enfranchisement of
women. On being asked what he intended to do about women's votes, he
dismissed the subject with the remark that his opinions on the subject
were well known and had suffered no change, but he reiterated the
promise of "facilities" for the Conciliation Bill in the 1912 Session.

The situation, therefore, was briefly this: An agitation of
ever-growing intensity and determination had for some years been
carried on by women for their own enfranchisement and no agitation at
all had been manifested by men for more votes for themselves; the
Prime Minister's response to this situation was to promise legislation
giving far larger and wider representation to men and none at all to
women. No wonder that he provoked an immediate outburst of militancy!
Stones were thrown and windows smashed all along the Strand,
Piccadilly, Whitehall and Bond Street, and members of the Government
went about in perpetual apprehension of personal assault.

The indignation of the Constitutional suffragists and of the Women's
Liberal Federation with Mr. Asquith was quite as real as that of the
"suffragettes" but it sought a different method of expression. Some
knowledge of this probably reached him, as for the first time in our
experience all the suffrage societies and the W.L.F. were invited by
the Prime Minister to form a deputation to him on the subject. What we
were accustomed to was sending an urgent demand to him to receive us
in a deputation and to get his reply that he believed "no useful
purpose would be served" by yielding to our request; but now, in
November, 1911, he was inviting us to come and see him! Of course we
went. His whole demeanor was much more conciliatory than it had ever
been before. He acknowledged the strength and intensity of the demand
of women for representation and admitted that in opposing it he was in
a minority both in his Cabinet and in his party; finally he added
that, although his personal opinions on the subject prevented him from
initiating and proposing the change which women were pressing for,