Images(5)

Letter to Editor (Rough Draft)

WriterWritten by Caroline Phillips (Aberdeen, Scotland, 1874 - 1956)

Date22 November 1907

Object NameLetter

Mediumpaper and ink

ClassificationsSocieties

Dimensions22.2 × 13.7cm

AcquisitionPresented in 1988.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDMS082705

Keywords

About MeThis is part of a collection of documents relating to Caroline Phillips (1874-1956), an Aberdonian journalist who was involved in the women's suffrage movement. The collection contains important correspondence between Phillips and key leaders in the suffrage movement, including Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.

Sir
I am very glad to learn from the columns of your paper that the Aberdeen Women's Liberal Association are anxious to make plain to Mr Asquith that they have ‘intense interest' in the subject of Women's’ Enfranchisement. We are further informed that they feel that any effort to get an audience with Mr Asquith w[oul]d be fruitless which is tantamount to an admission that nothing short of something in the nature of physical force will do job they are to content
themselves. With the time honoured process [repeated ad nauseum (crossed out)]of forwarding a communication which we are assured will be more emphatic than usual (on go to swell the scrap heap of washed effusions and blighted hopes. It seems hard to believe that a body of intelligent & experienced politicians like the WLAssn are not deliberately shutting their eyes to the facts of historical experience which all goes to prove that a combination of moral & physical force is required to bring about political reform of this kind.
The one without the other in dealing with is forlorn hope.

[To expect an earnest open minded woman to listen to a politician like Asquith preaching about democracy & liberty, which she is denied without making a relevant interjection. It is surely something to be ashamed of that a relevant interjection of disapproval from a woman should be (crossed out)]

A few the are be going to realise the cowardice & uselessness of ejecting & roughly handling a woman for making a relevant interruption at a ministers meeting; especially when the subject of his discourse is about liberty and democracy, both of which blessings are denied. When a proper sense of perspective should make men & women both see that the so called disorderly occurrences are taken to much from the Mrs Grundy point of view & the fact
is persistently ignored [by the vast majority of people (crossed out) ] that these are the visible manifestations of a great revolutionary force in the political relations of both sexes.
Admonision & advice from our good Liberal friends we have had enough & to spare - we ask their assistance which is infinitely more valuable to us. We ask them no more what they have to say but what they mean to do to help us.
They do not fear for their party, long were we women all acting on strike principles could seriously damage it the Liberal Party would cave in [on the subject (crossed out)] to our demands.

(possibly the rough draft set to the journal referred to in letter from AM Ramsay on 22 November, 1907 to Miss Phillips)