BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

who were occupiers in their own right were entitled to vote provided
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they were at least thirty years old.
The measure added 8.4 million
women to the rolls, four out of every six electors.
Ten years later
women were able to qualify on equal terms with men through the
enactment of the Equal Franchise bill. Fully 5.25 million females aged
twenty-one and older were added to the register by 1929, a total of
52.7 percent of the electorate.24
The legislation accelerated the departure of the Primrose
League from the forefront of Conservative politics.
The organization
had, over the years, come to be viewed as the principal body available
for Tory women to express their political convictions.
However, by
1918 females were granted one-third of all positions available on the
committees and delegations of the National Union.
By 1928 this figure
had risen to half, reflecting their growing strength in the electorate.
While the Primrose League resisted efforts to merge with the National
Union, other organizations were more conciliatory.
The Women's
Unionist and Tariff Reform Association, for example, quickly integrated
itself into the Union.
The Primrose League was left to forge its own
path,
increasingly confined to the political sidelines by the 1920's as
women came to identify directly with the interests of the National
Union and its parent party.25
24 Pugh, "Women's Suffrage in Britain," The Historical
Association, General Series 97 (1980), pp. 33-35, 37.
25 Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, p. 250.