"Suffrage" means the right to vote and that is what women
wanted. The move for women to have the vote had really started
in 1897 when the National Union of Women's Suffrage was founded.
Millicent Fawcett, the founder believed in a peaceful protest.
Her plan was to use patience and logical arguments. Fawcett
argued that women could hold responsible places in society such
as sitting on school boards; she argued that as women had to pay
taxes as men, they should have the same rights as men and one of
her most powerful arguments was that wealthy mistresses of large
manors and estates employed gardeners, workmen and labourers who
could vote, but the women could not regardless of their wealth.
Fawcett's progress was very slow. She converted some of the
members of the Labour Representation Committee but most of them
still believed that women simply would not understand how
Parliament worked and therefore should not take part in the
electoral process. This left many women angry and in 1903 the
Women's Social and Poli