page_title: George Lansbury
section_title: Campaigner for women's suffrage
hierarchical_section_title: George Lansbury / National prominence / Campaigner for women's suffrage
caption_attribution_description: English: Cat and Mouse Act poster
context_page_description: George Lansbury was a British politician and social reformer who led the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. Apart from a brief period of ministerial office during the Labour government of 1929–31, he spent his political life campaigning against established authority and vested interests, his main causes being the promotion of social justice, women's rights and world disarmament.
  Originally a radical Liberal, Lansbury became a socialist in the early 1890s, and thereafter served his local community in the East End of London in numerous elective offices. His activities were underpinned by his Christian beliefs which, except for a short period of doubt, sustained him through his life. Elected to Parliament in 1910, he resigned his seat in 1912 to campaign for women's suffrage, and was briefly imprisoned after publicly supporting militant action.
  In 1912, Lansbury helped to establish the Daily Herald newspaper, and became its editor. Throughout the First World War the paper maintained a strongly pacifist stance, and supported the October 1917 Russian Revolution. These positions contributed to Lansbury's failure to be elected to Parliament in 1918.
context_section_description: In the  general election of January 1906 Lansbury stood as an independent socialist candidate in Middlesbrough, on a strong "votes for women" platform. This was his first campaign based on women's rights since the LCC election of 1889. He had been recommended to the constituency by Joseph Fels, who agreed to meet his expenses. The local ILP leadership was committed by an electoral pact to support the  Liberal candidate, and could not endorse Lansbury, who secured less than 9 per cent of the vote. The campaign had been managed by Marion Coates Hansen, a prominent local suffragist. Under Hansen's influence Lansbury took up the cause of "votes for women"; he allied himself with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the more militant of the main suffragist organisations, and became a close associate of Emmeline Pankhurst and her family.
  The  Liberal government elected in 1906 with a large majority showed little interest in the issue of women's suffrage; when they lost their parliamentary majority in the general election of January 1910 they were dependent on the votes of the 40-odd Labour members. To Lansbury's dismay,  Labour did not use this leverage to promote votes for women, instead giving the  government virtually unqualified support to keep the Conservatives out of power. Lansbury had failed to win election as Labour's candidate at Bow and Bromley in January 1910; however, the continuing political crisis which  developed from David Lloyd George's controversial 1909 "People's Budget" led to another general election in December 1910. Lansbury again fought Bow and Bromley, and this time was successful.
  Lansbury found little support in his fight for women's suffrage from  his parliamentary Labour colleagues, whom he dismissed as "a weak, flabby lot". In parliament, he denounced the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, for the cruelties being inflicted on imprisoned suffragists:  "You are beneath contempt ... you ought to be driven from public life". He was temporarily suspended from the House for "disorderly conduct". In October 1912, aware of the unbridgeable gap between his own position and that of his Labour colleagues, Lansbury resigned his  seat to fight a by-election in Bow and Bromley on the specific issue of women's suffrage. The suffragettes sent Grace Roe to help with campaign. He  lost to his Conservative opponent, who  campaigned on the slogan "No Petticoat Government". Commenting on the result, the Labour MP Will Thorne opined that no constituency could ever be won on the single question of votes for women.
  Out of parliament, on 26 April 1913 Lansbury addressed a WSPU rally at the Albert Hall, and openly defended violent methods: "Let them burn and destroy property and do anything they will, and for every leader that is taken away, let a dozen step forward in their place". For this, Lansbury was charged with incitement, convicted and, after the dismissal of an appeal, sentenced to three months' imprisonment. He immediately went on  hunger strike, and was released after four days; although liable to rearrest under  the so-called "Cat and Mouse Act", he was thereafter left at liberty. In the autumn of 1913, at the invitation of  Fels, Lansbury and his wife travelled to America and Canada for an extended holiday. On his return, he devoted his main efforts to the recently founded newspaper, the Daily Herald.
caption: WSPU poster from 1914, denouncing the Liberal government's controversial "Cat and Mouse Act"
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