By the turn of the century, women's parliamentary enfranchisement had become a ubiquitous issue. It was one that all politically active women had to face, regardless of their personal party affiliation. In local government and within trade unions women had implemented parliamentary legislation devised by men, or patiently lobbied the men who were able to alter it. Beyond the municipal arena they had campaigned and canvassed to elect men to parliament. The increasing prominence of suffrage campaigns threw into stark relief many of the circles that loyal party women were trying to square. These campaigns questioned women's very presence in the parliamentcentred world of party politics, forcing all organisations to declare their position. Therefore, while the detailed responses of existing political organisations to the growing suffrage movement will be reviewed later, here the suffrage organisations themselves must take centre stage, as they did in their day.

The suffrage movement with its flamboyant actions and associated spectacle has attracted much historical attention, with many volumes now devoted to chronicling the policies of the two largest suffrage organisations, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). However, in writing the history of the suffrage movement on Merseyside, I have tried to move away from constructing a narrative that simply concentrates on the more spectacular actions that women undertook to achieve the franchise. Although some fairly sensational events will be mentioned, my concern is more with presenting the suffrage organisations as political organisations whose agenda placed the franchise alongside wider explorations of women's political roles. The geographical boundaries of my study allow space for a broad range of organisations to be considered simultaneously. The purpose of this is twofold. First, within a single locality it is possible to interpret the success of the different approaches of individual organisations to politicising women by comparing the levels of access that each succeeded in providing members to the public political sphere. Second, close examination of how particular organisations function on the ground and are experienced by individual members can further our understanding of them as national political bodies. Calls for women's suffrage had permeated Victorian radical circles since the days of Chartistism. The first suffrage petition, with 1,499 signatures, was presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill in 1866.