Men's League for Women's Suffrage (United Kingdom)

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Men's League for Women's Suffrage
Men's League for Women's Suffrage badge (UK)
Formation	1907 (1907) (UK)
Founders	Henry Brailsford et al (UK)
Location	London

The Men's League for Women's Suffrage was a society formed in 1907 in London and was part of the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.^[1]

History

The society formed in 1907 in London by Henry Brailsford, Charles Corbett, Henry Nevinson, Laurence Housman, C. E. M. Joad, Hugh Franklin, Henry Harben, Gerald Gould, Charles Mansell-Moullin, Israel Zangwill and 32 others.^[1] Graham Moffat founded the Northern Men's League for Women's Suffrage in Glasgow also in 1907 and wrote a suffrage propaganda play, The Maid and the Magistrate.^[2]

Bertrand Russell stood as a suffrage candidate in the 1907 Wimbledon by election.^[1]

By 1910 Henry Brailsford and Lord Lytton had, with Millicent Fawcett's permission, created a proposal that might have been the basis of an agreement that caused the suffrage movement to declare a truce on 14 February.^[3]

In 1911 they successfully took Liberals in Bradford to court for assaulting Alfred Hawkins. Alfred had shouted a question during a speech by Winston Churchill and he was ejected from the hall without warning. The judge considered this to be assault. Hawkins had received a fractured kneecap and he was awarded £100 plus costs.^[4] The group heard from orators including George Lansbury, Edith Mansell-Moullin, and Victor Duval in March 1912. Speakers there expressed their disgust at the treatment of William Ball, a male suffrage supporter and hunger striker, for being not only force-fed but effectively driven to lunacy and separated from his family by the authorities.^[5] Nevison produced a pamphlet on his case for the League, with the subtitle "Official Brutality on the increase".^[6]