§ Mr. ARNOLD WARDI beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the Law with respect to the Local Government Franchises and the Registration of Local Government Electors."
The object is to make a very substantial addition to the women on the local government electorate. I believe there is sympathy with this object on both sides of the House, both in the ranks of the suffragists and the anti-suffragists. The Bill proposes to enfranchise the bulk of married women who do not enjoy the local government vote at present. It is well known this cannot be done by merely enfranchising women upon the same terms as men. You have to find a new qualification, and I desire to make my acknowledgment to the hon. Member for St. Pancras (Mr. Dickinson), because I followed in this Bill the method of his celebrated Amendment to the Deceased Franchise Bill, and I propose to enfranchise the wives of occupiers provided that they reside in the same premises. This proposal is put forward purely on its merits on the ground that married women have a natural interest in and great experience of matters with which local authorities chiefly deal, such as education, housing and sanitation, and also on the ground that it would be a great advantage to efficient local government to enlist the co-operation of married women.
But I have also another object in view which will not necessarily command the agreement of all hon. Members who backed the Bill, and that is to provide a large and representative body of registered women 995 who can be consulted if and when a Referendum on Women Suffrage is taken. This Bill does not bring the Referendum any nearer. It can be supported by those strongly opposed to the Referendum for Women Suffrage or anything else, but the advantage is that if the desire to hold such a Referendum is ever carried, a great obstacle is removed. There is a general feeling that if such a Referendum is demanded, it would not be complete unless in some shape or form the women are consulted as to whether they should have the Parliamentary vote. At the present the local government female electorate is too small; it is only one million and a quarter; it is riot representative of the sex as a whole. But if you were, as this Bill proposes to do, to increase that electorate by large numbers, you would for the first time have a large body of registered women to whom this great and vexed question of Women Suffrage would, in the first instance, have to be submitted, and who could return an answer which could be properly said to be an answer representing the views of the sex.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Arnold Ward, Sir Ryland Adkins, Mr. Campion, Mr. Dickinson, and Mr. Hills. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to he read a second time To-morrow (Thursday), and to be printed. [Bill 365.]