Conciliation bills were proposed legislation which would extend the right of women to vote in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to just over a million wealthy, property-owning women. After the January 1910 election, an all-party Conciliation party, consisting of 36 members of parliament and chaired by Lord Lytton,[1] proposed the new Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill. Three Conciliation bills were put before the House of Commons, one each year in 1910, 1911 and in 1912, but all failed.
While the Liberal government of H. H. Asquith supported this, 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 Members of Parliament rejected them because they did not want any women to have the right to vote. Liberals also opposed the Bill because they believed that the women whom the bill would enfranchise were more likely to vote Conservative than Liberal.