Today in Scotland we take it for granted that women are allowed to vote in politics, and even become members of Parliament. However, the battle for equality was long and hard. Even though the Presbyterian Church practiced a form of Christian democracy since 1560, only male heads of the home were allowed to vote for their leaders. This would change in 1733 when Revd Ebenezer Erskine and some leading pastors left the Church of Scotland over the Patronage Act in 1712 and set up the Secession Church. Despite promises and legal obligations, the Presbyterian Church had again been intruded by the government, which ignored the decades of petitions by its leadership; yet again in our history the authorities scorned the democratic right of the church.
The blessing in disguise came with the Secession Church in 1733, for women were now allowed to vote for their leaders in that denomination. The Free Church also broke away from the Church of Scotland over the same issue of patronage in 1843, and they followed the Secessionist practice of allowing women to vote for their leaders. With such a groundswell for freedom for women to vote in the evangelical Presbyterian churches, as well as in the Quaker, Baptist, Congregational, and other denominations, it is not surprising that people began to press for women to vote alongside men for their political candidates. Revd Dr Robert Wallace, the minister at Old Greyfriars’ Kirk in Edinburgh, and the former Professor of Church History at the University of Edinburgh, took it a step further. ‘If women were allowed to exercise political privileges,’ he said,‘where was the matter to stop? Why not permit them to enter Parliament itself?’Being the editor of The Scotsman newspaper, his call echoed throughout the nation. That was in 1870; the first woman parliamentarian would not be until 1919.
Eliza Wigham (1820-1899) was a Quaker Christian from Edinburgh who rose to prominence in the suffragist movement. The suffragists are not to be confused with the suffragettes who came later. The suffragists were mostly Christian women who were inspired by Christ’s message of equality. They believed in spreading a peaceful movement of promoting equality and petitioning the government for the right of women to vote politically. The suffragette movement however, grew out the suffragists, but was led by a group who sought emancipation through more extreme and violent means.
Three women’s suffrage societies were formed in 1867 in London, Edinburgh and Manchester, which came together under the banner of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. In Edinburgh we can uncover the strong Christian influence in this movement. Eliza Wigham and her step-mother, Jane Wigham (née Smeal), were the founders of the Edinburgh branch. Both were keen Quaker Christians who had fought for the emancipation of slaves, and now the victory had been won in that arena, it was time to focus their energies on liberating women to vote in Britain. The key leaders of the Edinburgh branch were all dedicated Quaker Christians: the first president was Priscilla Bright McLaren; the two secretaries were Eliza Wigham and Agnes McLaren, Priscilla’s daughter; and the treasurer was Elizabeth Pease. When the first national suffrage gathering happened in Manchester at the Free Trade Hall in 1868, Priscilla Bright McLaren was its first presiding leader.
Priscilla Bright McLaren was surrounded by influential members of Parliament: her husband, Duncan McLaren, was a devoted Presbyterian Christian, and as a Liberal MP for Edinburgh his passion for all things Scottish had given him the endearing popular title of ‘the Member for Scotland’. His hard work and support for the Free Church dissenters had gained a strong evangelical base, and his wisdom and skill in pulling Edinburgh out of bankruptcy, as well as promoting free schools for poor children, earned him great favour in Scottish society. Together with Priscilla’s Quaker brothers, John and Jacob Bright, who were both MPs, Duncan McLaren spearheaded this Christian political trio to press for women’s voting rights in Parliament. However, it was the women, led by Eliza Wigham and her Quaker friends, who prepared the nation for emancipation. Increasingly the suffragists became frustrated at the slow progress in nearly forty years of campaigning for freedom. Out of this frustration emerged the more radical approach of the suffragettes, and eventual victory for women in 1918 onwards.
‘For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus… there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:26-28, NKJV).
Image: The Suffragettes, Annie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst http://www.hastingspress.co.uk/history/sufpix.htm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons