The Women's Suffrage Movement in Wales, 1866-1928, by Ryland Wallace

Abstract

One of the most important recent trends in British women’s suffrage historiography has been the shift in focus from London to the areas outside the capital, including those that maintained a strong non-English identity, in order to obtain a clearer picture of the grass-roots campaign. This has enabled historians to recognise that, at the local level, the suffrage movement was often very different from the way in which its London leaders perceived it, and has resulted in some important challenges to the traditional narrative. Ryland Wallace’s study of the Welsh suffrage campaign is thus very timely, although it is not entirely successful in riding this historiographical wave. The author’s objectives in this book were to fill an important gap in the suffrage historiography, and to contribute to our understanding of the larger British women’s suffrage movement. He is more successful in the former than in the latter. This is the first book-length study of the women’s suffrage issue in Wales in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. It provides a detailed chronological narrative of the campaign in Wales from the mid-1860s to the achievement of equal suffrage in 1928. It includes separate chapters on the Victorian suffrage campaign, the three major suffrage organisations (the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the Women’s Social and Political Union, and the Women’s Freedom League), the anti-suffragists, the First World War, and the 1920s. Based on an impressive range of primary sources, it is a treasure-trove of information about Welsh suffragists and the Welsh suffrage campaign.