Militants
Sir: When a learned Professor indulges in personal abuse (5 August) — 'a resurrected suffragette', 'feminism so insecure' — something has hit him on a weak spot; but whatever can it be?
Was my joke about the phrenological fantasy really so hurtful? According to Brian Harrison, a scientist expects us to believe that, due to the difference in brain structure between the sexes, women excel verbally and men excel musically. But are women wittier, more eloquent, better conversationalists than men? Are tenors generally more musical than sopranos? These are fair questions, surely? Or is the historian sore simply because I could not accept the reasons he gives for Asquith's opposition to votes for women; a refusal he attributes to my political innocence. Admittedly, my twenty-five years experience in electioneering, demonstrating, participating in arguments with MPs and so forth, cannot compare with the heavy involvement of professors at Corpus Christi in the hurly-burly of politics; but perhaps Brian Harrison would admit that Roy Jenkins is no political innocent. He gives as the sole reason for Asquith's obduracy on the woman question a lack of imagination. Asquith himself said in his speech of 6 May, 1913, that he did not think that the enfranchisement of women would be 'in the best interest of women themselves', not of the state or of society.
Unlike the Feminist History Group who once accused Brian Harrison of anti-feminism, I praised his objectivity. But what are we to think of a historian who, in his letter, dismissed as 'a second order issue', less important even than Welsh disestablislunent, a fundamental constitutional reform, that is, an extension of the franchise to women, not on a 'class restricted property basis', but on any terms whatsoever? Brian Harrison forgets that the women's second Conciliation Bill was open to any amendment suggested by the politicians. So disparaging a regard for democratic values is no more respectable today than it was in 1913.
Jill Craigie London NW3
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