Norway as an Example in the UK Women’s Suffrage Campaign

Abstract

This article analyses the character and meanings of references to Norwegian experiences in the UK women’s suffrage campaign. It argues that the references to Norway served two main purposes. Firstly, they served as evidence of all the good things that would happen as a result of women gaining the vote, such as wage equality and social reform. Secondly, they played a significant part in establishing a counter-narrative to the anti-suffragist warnings of all the terrible things that would follow women’s suffrage. The study also discusses the limitations of political exchange and shows how different political contexts came into play in the debates on the validity of the Norwegian example.

Keywords:

• Women’s suffrage
• political exchange
• transnational history
• political examples
• political citizenship

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Maja Zahl, Merethe Winsents Foer, and Svein Atle Skålevåg for very constructive comments on article drafts and invaluable encouragement. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees and the editors for their very pertinent and helpful comments.

Notes

1. The main organizations in Ireland were the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL) and the Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation (IWSF). See Owens, 1984; Watkins, 2014.

2. See “Women’s Suffrage” 1 March 1912; “Mr. E.M. Pollock and Women’s Suffrage”, 5 January 1912; “The Suffrage Movement”, 21 February 1912; “Suffrage Prospects”, 14 January 1913.

3. She received several war medals for her service. When the war ended, she stayed in the Oxford area, where she adopted a son (“Helga Gill”, 1929, p. 122).

4. Castberg served as Minister of Justice (1908–1910), Minister of Trade, Shipping, and Industry (1913), and Minister of Social Affairs, Trade, Industry, and Fisheries (1913–1914).

5. Anker’s nephew, Frede Castberg, has stated in his memoirs that her criticism of the militants and partiality for the Liberal leader, Lloyd George, was a matter of disagreement in the family. He recalls a heated discussion between Ella Anker, who criticized the militant methods of the suffragettes, and her sister, Katti Anker Møller, and his father, Johan Castberg, who supported them (Castberg, 1971, p. 438).

6. MBE: Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

7. For an analysis of her work as a wartime correspondent, see Sandberg, 2007. After moving back to Norway, Anker founded the Anglo-Norse Society and continued her political work, particularly related to the rights of single mothers, leading to her being labelled “the mother of the children’s allowance” (Høyer, 2009).

8. Such generalizations and exaggerations were not uncommon in this type of political mobilization of foreign experiences, and parallel the British Chartists’ and the Irish Repeal movement’s somewhat glorified image of the political situation in Norway during the 1830s and 1840s (Rosland, 2014).

9. The countries he mentions are Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Finland, and some US American states.

10. Rowland Kenney worked as a journalist and became editor of the radical newspaper The Daily Herald in 1912 (Crawford, 2006, p. 10). He later became a British propaganda agent in Norway during the First World War (Buvarp, 2016).

11. Although she was a supporter of women’s suffrage, a letter from 1913 indicates that she was very critical of the militant methods of the suffragettes (Kjellberg, 2009).