Conciliation Bills

Conciliation bills were bills proposing to introduce women's suffrage in the United Kingdom subject to a property qualification, which would have given just over a million wealthy women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Three Conciliation bills were put before the House of Commons, in 1910, 1911, and 1912, but each failed.

After the January 1910 election, the Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill was drafted by a Conciliation Committee for Woman Suffrage, ultimately comprising 54 Members of Parliament (MPs — 25 Liberal, 17 Conservative, 6 Labour and 6 Irish nationalist), with Lord Lytton as chair and H. N. Brailsford as secretary. While the minority Liberal government of H. H. Asquith supported the bill, a number of backbenchers, both Conservative and Liberal, did not, fearing that it would damage their parties' success in general elections. Some pro-suffrage groups rejected the bills because they only gave the vote to propertied women; some MPs rejected them because they did not want any women to have the right to vote. Liberals also opposed the bills because they believed that the women whom the bills would enfranchise were more likely to vote Conservative than Liberal.