THE H FILES

The Queen’s power in making New Zealand laws is largely a formality, but when it came to giving women the vote, the country was in an uproar over what the Governor should do.

For 11 tense days in 1893, suffragists organised meetings demanding Lord Glasgow give his immediate viceregal assent to the women’s suffrage bill that had been passed by Parliament.

On the other side of the wrangle, the liquor industry organised petitions demanding the opposite — with the help, allegedly, of free drinks.

And amid all the shouting, the colony’s new Premier, the wily Richard “King Dick” Seddon, who still holds the record for the longest stint in the job, 13 years, kept everyone guessing.

The struggle for women’s suffrage — the right of all women aged 21 or older to vote in parliamentary elections — had gradually gained speed in the 1870s. However the tactics of ever-growing women’s petitions and regular bills for legislators to debate shifted into high gear only once the first Liberal government took office in 1891.

Expectations were heightened with the entry of the reforming Liberals, but the question of women’s suffrage unleashed competing forces on both radical and more conservative politicians.

The progress towards women’s suffrage was never without parliamentary wheeling and dealing, twists and turns. Four women’s suffrage bills stalled or were withdrawn or defeated from 1890 to 1892.

Sir John Hall’s 1891 women’s suffrage bill stumbled through opposition from liquor industryaligned members of the House. It was passed, but only with an amendment — a clause to allow women to stand for Parliament — which would be considered a step too far until 1919. This ensured the bill’s death in the Legislative Council, New Zealand’s Upper House.

The suffragists ramped up their efforts for 1892: six petitions for the vote, bearing more than 19,000 women’s signatures, were presented to Parliament. This was more than double the number of the prior year.

The petitions came to be organised by the charismatic Kate Sheppard, of the Christian Women’s Temperance Union (WCTU), an organisation that grafted the growing call for women’s equality with men on to the ideals of the anti-liquor movement.

Established in New Zealand in 1885, the WCTU wanted to purify politics and society. It believed women would refine the polling booth, were “less accessible” to vote bribery, and would be more inclined to vote for peace. By being excluded from voting, the WCTU argued, women had been classed with juveniles, lunatics and convicts.

The campaign faced arguments, based on religion and tradition, that women’s “natural” sphere was the home and that upsetting this by drawing them into the turbulent men’s world of politics would wreck the social order. Then there was the formidable liquor industry, which feared the women’s vote would swing the electorate towards tighter alcohol controls.

Radical Liberals — and some conservatives — thought most women would support radical reforms. Other Liberals — and many conservatives — thought women would vote conservatively.

George Stead, a Christchurch businessman and chairman of the Press newspaper company, voiced the fears of the conservative minority in a letter to Hall.

“I cannot help expressing the opinion that you are making a fatal mistake in advocating the female franchise. It will double the majority against us and make the country more communistic that it is already.

“There are more poor than rich in the world and the poor women having no sense of justice or in fact of right or wrong will be the most ardent supporters of spoliation. I have been amongst the poor in Christchurch quite lately and it is among women that one hears the most democratic and revolutionary theories.”

Seddon biographer Tom Brooking writes that by the end of 1892 it was clear there was considerable public support for the women’s franchise.

“A huge petition of over 30,000 signatures, representing nearly a quarter of the adult women in New Zealand, collected by Kate Sheppard and presented . . . [to Parliament] on 28 July 1893, reinforced this point.

“No Government promoting itself as liberal, advanced and progressive could afford to swim against such a democratic tide.”

Brooking told the Herald that Seddon and most of his Cabinet, rather than being “misogynist or antisuffrage per se”, were terrified that enfranchised women would vote the Liberals out of office.

Alongside the national suffrage campaign, there was a brief push for voting equality in the Kotahitanga, the autonomous Ma¯ ori Parliament that existed from 1892 to 1902. In 1893, Meri Mangakahia, the Speaker’s wife, was recorded as being the first woman to address the Kotahitanga Parliament when she proposed, unsuccessfully, that Ma¯ ori women be allowed to vote at its elections and stand for membership.

All Ma¯ ori men were permitted to vote in the New Zealand Parliament’s elections from 1867, initially only in Ma¯ ori electorates. This was 12 years