This post will be about the three Conciliation Bills introduced between 1910-1912 in Britain.

Firstly in 1910 , a Conciliation Committee was set up.

This Committee consisted of 25 Liberal MP's , 12 Conservative MP's and 6 Labour MP's and 6 Irish Nationalists. 

It's aim was to gain support for women's suffrage bills to be introduced into Parliament. 

First Conciliation Bill

This bill was introduced by a Labour MP called David Shackleton in June 1910. It passed both first reading and second reading with a large majority. 

HOWEVER , Parliament was dissolved in Nov 1910 so women's suffrage was not granted. 

Strike 2 -

The Second Conciliation Bill was introduced in 1911. 

It again passed both first and second readings.

HOWEVER, this time the Chancellor Exchequer David Lloyd George ( Conservative) refused to spend any more time on the bill in this session so once again, the issue had been avoided.

He did however promise that further time would be allowed to be spent on it during next session, if it passed second reading.

Strike 3-

The Third Conciliation Bill was passed in 1912.

Asquith decided to instead introduce a manhood suffrage bill which would include women's suffrage...

In the words of Christabel Pankhurst - The Conciliation Bill had been 'Torpedoed' .

When the manhood suffrage bill passed the House of Commons - the Speaker of the House of Commons spoke up against it and refused to admit a bill which included 'women's suffrage' as this would change the nature of the Bill.

So it seems that both David Lloyd George and Asquith, had avoided the issue and thus defeated the idea of  a ' Conciliation Committee' and the inclusion of women's suffrage. 

What does Augustus Leopold Egg's : Past and Present painting actually mean?

Here the man of the house is holding a letter in his hand and under his foot a photo. These clues along with the position of the woman ( his wife no doubt) lying on the ground ,tell us that he has possibly found out that she has committed adultery. The half-eaten apple lying beside her signifies a religious connotation from the story of Adam and Eve; as the apple is half eaten it shows that the woman , once pure has lost her innocence. In the background the two children are building a house of cards which if you look clearly you can see it falling apart- this signifies the real house which is equally falling apart due to the wife's actions. The moral of the story is that an ideal woman ( "angel in the house") is a vital part of a family and household but also shows the sexual double standards in Victorian society concluding that while it is okay for a man to commit adultery, a woman should never allow her carnival instincts to take over in such a manner.

The Angel in the House

"The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be "the Angel in the House"; she was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all--pure. The phrase "Angel in the House" comes from the title of an immensely popular poem by Coventry Patmore, in which he holds his angel-wife up as a model for all women.
Believing that his wife Emily was the perfect Victorian wife, he wrote "The Angel in the House" about her (originally published in 1854, revised through 1862). Though it did not receive much attention when it was first published in 1854, it became increasingly popular through the rest of the nineteenth century and continued to be influential into the twentieth century. For Virginia Woolf, the repressive ideal of women represented by the Angel in the House was still so potent that she wrote, in 1931, "Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer."
The following excerpt will give you a sense of the ideal woman and the male-female relationship presented by Patmore's poem:

Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.

Initially this ideal primarily expressed the values of the middle classes. However, Queen Victoria's devoting herself to her husband Prince Albert and to a domestic life encouragead the ideal to spread throughout nineteenth century society." Comments Welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo

"When thinking of evidence as a way of reconstructing the past, one ought to keep in mind that there are in fact different forms of historical truth that are being accessed through that evidence. This is by no means to say that there is no such thing as historical truth, much less its cognate opposite, that there is no such thing as historical falsehood. Both truth and falsehood most definitely exist but neither is homogenous or unitary. There are multiple forms of truth and of falsehood, even with regard to any single instance or event. Different forms of evidence are useful for accessing different forms of truth. Similarly, different modes of interpreting the same evidence will likewise generate different forms of truth."

This is my official blog on history- I will be particularly concentrating on the Tudors, Women's role in Britain and possibly some American Civil War.

The truth about Mary Boleyn ?