PETHICK-LAWRENCE, F. W.

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The Bye-Election Policy of the Women's Social and Political Union. Second edition of an informational pamphlet explaining and promoting the suffragette's tactics at local elections. The work sets out a clear political stance: that all Liberal candidates should be actively opposed at the polls, regardless of their personal position on women's suffrage. It was first published earlier in 1909.The WSPU decided to focus their attention on strategically voting to damage the unsympathetic or ambivalent Liberal government, rather than supporting sympathetic individual candidates, who they found insincere, or powerless to effect change. In practical terms, this meant that the WSPU maintained a presence at all by-elections with a Liberal candidate, where they would encourage electors to vote against them. Provenance: from the collection of the suffrage historian Elizabeth Crawford.

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