class or colony? treatment of lower classes in relation to deportation.

CDfm wrote: »

Thanks MarchDub

did that apply to all elections or was it just parlimentary elections

MarchDub wrote: »

The Parliamentary franchise was the big win for women and the one that was most difficult to obtain - women had some limited access to voting in local elections from the 1890s when local government councils were set up under The Local Government [Ireland] Act of 1898. The suffragette Anna Haslam said that this Act was the most significant political revolution for women and a significant stepping stone to the parliamentary vote and in mobilizing other women into their cause.

It seems incredible to us now but part of the problem for the suffragette movement was getting other women motivated into action. But most revolutions are like that - a few brave souls go out front and drag others along to achieve change.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: A noisy protest in the gallery of the House of Commons in 1906 by women campaigning for the right to vote was criticised by The Irish Times in an editorial, drawing a prompt counter response from several letter writers, including Francis Sheehy Skeffington, who was later murdered by a British army officer during the Easter Rising. – JOE JOYCE
Sir, – Will you allow me space for a few words of common sense in relation to the scene enacted in the House of Commons upon Wednesday night? Some comments in the Press remind me forcibly of a modification of the old saying to the effect that, while a man may steal a horse, a woman may not look over the wall. No one proposes to disenfranchise the entire male population of the United Kingdom on account of the disgraceful scenes that are sometimes exhibited, not, indeed, in the galleries, but upon the floor of the House, amongst the members themselves, and under the eyes of the Speaker; but because some half-dozen foolish women got an admission to the Ladies’ Gallery upon Wednesday night, the entire womanhood of the Kingdom are to be denied their constitutional rights indefinitely, if not, indeed, to the end of the world! I do not believe that the incident will have the effect of retarding the Parliamentary enfranchisement of women by a single day. Such incidents, if they were multiplied one hundred fold, would not have a feather’s weight, with reasonable men, in annulling the legitimate claims of women, which 400 members of the present House of Commons are pledged to support. Whether that support will embody itself in an Act during the existence of the present Parliament, I am not in a position to predict; perhaps the deputation to the Prime Minister upon the 19th of May may elicit an answer; but the cause of women is progressing by rapid strides throughout the whole civilised world and their Parliamentary enfranchisement cannot be much longer postponed at the bidding of an ever-diminishing number of opponents, even though consisting of both sexes. - Yours, etc., Thomas J. Haslam.
125 Leinster road, 27th April, 1906.
Sir, – I need not occupy much space in protesting against the tone of your leading article on the Woman’s Suffrage Demonstration, because your London correspondent, in a neighbouring column, has given an effective reply by telling us that, in the opinion of some “old Parliamentary hands,” the vigorous agitation which culminated in Wednesday’s disturbance cannot fail, in the end, to benefit the feminist cause. These old Parliamentarians are right, and the officials of the National Union of Woman’s Suffrage Societies, in deploring and repudiating the occurrence, are wrong. The question has passed beyond the stage of argument. Only hide-bound prejudice now stands in the way of woman’s emancipation, and that prejudice can only be overcome by vigorous and even violent attacks. That women have at last roused themselves to organise such attacks is a healthy sign, and should dispose of the worn-out argument that “women don’t want to vote”. A new earnestness and fervour have come into the movement, with the growing interest in it of the working-women. Mrs [Millicent] Fawcett , who will not be suspected of any strong sympathy with revolutionary methods, put the case admirably in her letter to the Morning Post in a few months ago. She said, in effect (I am quoting from memory), “We, middle-class women, have been agitating the suffrage question for a long time, in our own middle-class way, and have made very little progress. Now the working-women have taken up the question, and are agitating it in their own way. It is not our way, but it may be a much more effective way.” And she went on to instance, as a parallel case, the difference in methods and in success between Butt and Parnell.
Some suffragists may be too “respectable” to approve of the methods of the working-women; but they may have to choose between respectability and efficiency. Napoleon won his battles by breaking all the rules of warfare. – Yours, etc.,
Francis S. Skeffington
8 Airfield road, Rathgar, 27th April, 1906

MarchDub wrote: »

Yes all males over 21 and females over 30 got the vote in 1918.

I looked up the 1911 census and I see that the total population for Ireland was was 4,390,219 - 2,192,048 were male and 2,198,171 were female. So can just about figure from that how many males were enfranchised prior to 1918.