Women's suffrage campaigners: Millicent Fawcett

At the outbreak of war in 1914, militant suffragette activity was suspended by the Women's Social and Political Union. However suffrage campaigning did not stop, but took different forms. The leader of the militant Women's Freedom League, Charlotte Despard, was a socialist pacifist. The constitutional National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies was split, with some of its leaders opposing the war and others, including its president Millicent Fawcett, supporting it.

Throughout the Speaker's Conference, women's suffrage campaigners lobbied politicians extensively. Foremost among these was Millicent Fawcett. Following the report of the Conference, she presided over a deputation of women war workers to Prime Minister Lloyd George in March 1917. Fawcett declared that all campaigners were resolved to support the Conference, as: ‘We would greatly prefer an imperfect scheme that can pass to the most perfect scheme in the world that could not pass.'