‘Votes for Women’ was opposed by a strange alliance of reactionary men and women, who believed in different roles for the two sexes – and implicitly for the subordination of women by men. The badge displayed below was worn by a woman member of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, which was founded in December 1910 as an amalgamation of two previously separate organisations, for men and women. Its first president was of course a man, Lord Cromer, though its executive committee consisted of seven men and seven women. It published the Anti-Suffrage Review (produced originally by the Women’s League) and produced emotive posters to emphasize that ‘a mother’s place is in the home’.
There was a branch of the League in Southwold, but little is known of its activities – it was evidently much less well supported than the local branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, with its membership of nearly 100.
