Page 89 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 11 February 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
It was not until a further eight years had passed, bringing us to 1907, that women finally reached the point of taking militant action. Over 3,000 women marched from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall in the rain. Seventy-five suffragettes were arrested after attempting to storm the Houses of Parliament. Herbert Asquith, a strong opponent of women’s suffrage, became Prime Minister that same year. In 1908, 250,000 people attended a Sunday demonstration in Hyde Park. Asquith ignored the message. Women began smashing windows in Downing Street and tying themselves to railings. In 1909, hunger strikes began, along with a “No vote, no tax” campaign.
The First World War broke out the following year. The vital support of women for the war effort made a strong case for their voting rights, which of course were immediately granted. Again, who are we kidding? No way. Women over the age of 30 were finally given the right to vote in February 1918, 3½ years after the war began, but it was not until 1928 that all adult women could finally cast a vote.
Looking around this chamber, in which women outnumber men, it seems hard to believe that the fight for full women’s suffrage in Britain took the better part of 100 years. Of course we were not that backward here in Australia. Women had attained full voting rights and the right to stand for parliament in South Australia by 1895, as, importantly, had Indigenous men and women. Federally women could vote and stand for parliament in 1902.
But the point remains that after 70 years of polite petition signing, society forming, meeting organising and cogent argument making, British women in 1907 were barely closer to having the vote than they had been in 1832. And who knows if Australian women would have been listened to as quickly without the efforts of their counterparts in England.
Movements pushing for the abolition of slavery in America and throughout the British Empire and for the emancipation of the serfs in tsarist Russia went through similarly lengthy and increasingly frustrated struggles to be heard. More recently, movements for ending the Vietnam War, for no dams on the Franklin River, for LGBTQI rights and marriage equality, all these movements and more worked, petitioned, argued, agitated and protested over a period of years before seeing success.
Imagine a world in which the pioneers and leaders of these movements had not acted with such courage and persistence, had not gained the support of large segments of the population, had not kept working, had not gone out into the streets. It is a much less pleasant, much less equitable place. Protest is a vital part of any public conversation about change. Peaceful protest is a right.
Peaceful protest has been in the news again as a result of the growing demands for ambitious government action on climate change around the world. Here in Australia these demands have grown even louder this summer in the wake of our devastating fires. We are seeing the same attempts to repress protests that we have always seen.
The reason why some want to stop climate change protests is, of course, that they make a difference.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video