Men's League for Women's Suffrage | |
Formation: | (UK) |
Founders: | Henry Brailsford et al (UK) |
Location: | London |
Owners: | --> |
The Men's League for Women's Suffrage was a society formed in 1907 in London and was part of the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.[1]
The society formed in 1907 in London by Henry Brailsford, Charles Corbett, Henry Nevinson, Laurence Housman, C. E. M. Joad, Hugh Franklin, Henry Harben, Gerald Gould, Charles Mansell-Moullin, Israel Zangwill and 32 others.[1] Graham Moffat founded the Northern Men's League for Women's Suffrage in Glasgow also in 1907 and wrote a suffrage propaganda play, The Maid and the Magistrate.[2]
Bertrand Russell stood as a suffrage candidate in the 1907 Wimbledon by election.[1]
By 1910 Henry Brailsford and Lord Lytton had, with Millicent Fawcett's permission, created a proposal that might have been the basis of an agreement that caused the suffrage movement to declare a truce on 14 February.[3]
In 1911 they successfully took Liberals in Bradford to court for assaulting Alfred Hawkins. Alfred had shouted a question during a speech by Winston Churchill and he was ejected from the hall without warning. The judge considered this to be assault. Hawkins had received a fractured kneecap and he was awarded £100 plus costs.[4] The group heard from orators including George Lansbury, Edith Mansell-Moullin, and Victor Duval in March 1912. Speakers there expressed their disgust at the treatment of William Ball, a male suffrage supporter and hunger striker, for being not only force-fed but effectively driven to lunacy and separated from his family by the authorities.[5] Nevison produced a pamphlet on his case for the League, with the subtitle "Official Brutality on the increase".