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The Church League for Women's Suffrage


In 1909 Claude Hinscliffe (who had previously been curate at St George-in-the-East) and his wife founded the Church League for Women's Suffrage, which became the largest of several church-based groups campaigning for votes for women. Others included the Free Church League for Women's Suffrage and the Catholic Women's Suffrage League. (See chapter 6 of Sophia van Wingerden The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain 1866-1928.)

Claude was the first Secretary, and the renowned Dr Agnes Maude Royden [pictured left as a young woman and in 1937 leaving Waterloo Station for the USA] was Chairman [sic]. Its object was to bind together, on a non-party basis, Suffragists of every shade of opinion who are Church people in order to secure for women the vote in Church and State, as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods were devotional and educational. CLWS members made special intercessions for the League and its members at holy communion on the first Sunday of the month. A committee was set up to prepare draft recommendations for the revision of the Marriage Service in the Book of Common Prayer. One reference book says that the end of 1913 it had 103 branches and 5080 members, but another gives the figure as 66 branches with 3000 members, including 5 bishops.

In February 1914 the League rejected a motion, proposed by its Worcester branch, that it should declare itself opposed to militancy; as a result it lost a number of members. Then came the war - but the work continued; as this letter shows, the CLWS supported the Serbian Relief Fund. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed, abolishing the property qualification for men and giving the vote to women over 30 with minimal property qualifications. Full female suffrage had to wait until 1928.
As for women's rights in the church, in 1919 the Church of England (Assembly) Powers Act [commonly known as the Enabling Act] created the national Church Assembly (the precursor of General Synod), with powers to pass 'Measures' which have the same authority as Acts of Parliament; it paved the way for the creation of Parochial Church Councils in every parish. As a result, women increasingly began to take their place in local and national church governance, though it was a slow and sometimes painful process!

Like many other CLWS members, Claude Hinscliffe was also a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, and his wife of the Women's Freedom League. Margaret Nevison, of the WFL, who a generation earlier had been a 'lay collector' at Katharine Buildings, wrote a short story about clerical involvement in the cause; she described how a high-church parson (a bachelor and a keen boxer) was moved by the appeals of a young girl who received shameful treatment (based on events at Manchester Corn Exchange in 1905); he was 'converted' and appealed to 'our common manhood'. Margaret's journalist husband Henry was active as a moderate within the MLWS (for example, he opposed flour-bagging parliamentarians). See ch.1 of The Men's Share? ed. Angela V. John & Claire Eustance (Routledge 1997) for details of the various organisations.

After the First World War CLWS was retitled the 'League of the Church Militant' and enlarged its horizons to include work for the ordination of women. It produced a series of pamphlets, including *Ursula RobertsThe Cause of Purity & Women's Suffrage; Maurice Bell The Church & Women's Suffrage, Dr Helen Hanson From East to West; and A. Maude Royden May Mission Speeches;  as well as various leaflets.

Several branches had fine banners, some of which are now housed in museums [pictured is the Hampstead one, designed by Laurence Housman and maybe worked by his sister Clemence whom he described as 'chief banner-maker for the Suffrage Atelier'].  The League's main banner, designed by Oswald Fleuss and made by the Audrey School of Needlework, depicted St Margaret of Antioch.

* Ursula Roberts, an early member, who was born in India in 1887 (the daughter of a Lieutenant-Colonel) and married the Rev William Corbett Roberts in 1909) later became one of the key members of the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women in the preparations for the 1930 Lambeth Conference, and a member of the interdenominational Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church. 

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