Women's National Anti-Suffrage League

However, the first meeting of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League only took place the following year on 21 July, at the Westminster Palace Hotel with Lady Jersey in the chair.

The League's aims were to oppose women being granted the parliamentary franchise, though it did support their having votes in local and municipal elections.

(b) Because the complex modern State depends for its very existence on naval and military power, diplomacy, finance, and the great mining, constructive, shipping and transport industries, in none of which can women take any practical part.

To make proper use of it, however, will tax all the energies that women have to spare, apart from the care of the home and the development of the individual life.

The legitimate influence of women in politics – in all classes, rich and poor – will always be in proportion to their education and common sense.

But the deciding power of the Parliamentary vote should be left to men, whose physical force is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the State.

(g) Because, finally, the danger which might arise from the concession of woman-suffrage, in the case of a State burdened with such complex and far-reaching responsibilities as England, is out of all proportion to the risk run by those smaller communities which have adopted it.

The organisation continued its activities and the publication of the Anti-Suffrage Review until 1918 when both came to an end as women's suffrage was granted by the Representation of the People Act 1918.