16,809,929

_Women._
8,479,156
Naval and Military Voters 3,372
8,482,528

At the annual Council meeting of the National Union of Women's
Suffrage Societies held in March, 1918, its object was changed by
formal vote. It was no longer necessary to concentrate on Women's
Suffrage and we adopted as our object "To obtain all such reforms as
are necessary to secure a real equality of liberties, status and
opportunities between men and women." No change of name was made until
the following year when a revised constitution was adopted and the
name was modified in accordance with our present object. We have now
become the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and we
hope that the letters N. U. S. E. C. will soon become as familiar and
as dear to our members as N. U. W. S. S. were in the old days. At the
same meeting I retired from the presidency and my friend and
colleague, Miss Eleanor Rathbone, was elected in my place.

[216] In 1907 Acts of parliament for England, Wales and Scotland (and
one for Ireland in 1911) made women eligible as members of Town,
County, Burgh and Borough Councils and as chairmen of these bodies,
including the right to be Mayors and Provosts, Aldermen and Baillies,
with the limitation that women appointed to an office carrying with it
the right to be Justices of the Peace should be incapacitated from so
acting. These Acts though non-contentious in the party sense required
fourteen years' strenuous work to secure their adoption as Government
measures. This was achieved during Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's
premiership, the necessary legislation being announced in the King's
Speech as part of the Government programme.

In 1918 the Qualification of Women Act for the United Kingdom made
women eligible to the House of Commons. The Bill passed almost without
opposition through both Houses and became law in the week ending
November 16. As the General Election took place on December 14 there
was little time for preparation, nevertheless, there were seventeen
women candidates and one, the Countess Makievicz, a Sinn Feiner, was
elected but refused to take her seat. The fact that her husband was a
foreigner made it doubtful whether she would have been allowed to do
so, though an Irishwoman by birth. In 1919 Viscountess Astor was
elected for Plymouth.

In 1919 the Sex Di