The Government suffered their first House of Commons defeat in the present Parliament yesterday. It was not a snap division, as the Government had sent out a heavily-underlined "whip" specially requesting the attendance of their supporters by 12:30, "as the Government will oppose the Women's Emancipation Bill on the ground that it alters the franchise."
It is another case of the election pledges of the Prime Minister coming home to roost. Mr Lloyd George and Mr Bonar Law stated definitely in a manifesto for the Coalition issued on the eve of the General Election that it would be "the duty of the new Government to remove all existing inequalities of the law as between men and women."
It will be seen that this declaration for complete sex equality was made without qualification or reservation of any sort. The Labour Party took the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House of Commons at their word. They introduced a Bill providing that women might hold any civil or judicial office, that they should exercise the franchise on the same terms as men, and that they might sit and vote in the House of Lords. The House of Commons gave the Bill a second reading, and it was sent to a Standing Committee, which passed it without amendment. The Government throughout contended that the drafting of the Bill was defective, and definitely opposed any tampering with the agreed settlement of last year, by which the franchise was granted to certain classes of women who had attained the age of 30 years.
The Bill came on for third reading in the House of Commons yesterday. The Government had given every opportunity to the 500 odd supporters of the Coalition to rally to their support. Either through slackness or through fear of the consequences of the repudiation of a pledge, which most of them had given on the strength of the assurance contained in the Coalition manifesto, they only mustered 85 votes in the division lobby. As 100 members voted for the third reading of the Bill, the measure passed the House of Commons and was sent to the House of Lords.
