The campaign for parliamentary suffrage provided local Conservative women with the organisational base that the Primrose League had failed to deliver. It also had far-reaching effects on the local political development of the Liberal and socialist parties. For women who continued to work within parties there were difficult and painful choices between their personal wish for the vote, the official attitudes of their parties towards the question, and the perceived political opportunities that their parties continued to offer them. The WLF eventually split over the Liberal government's repeated attempts to avoid the issue in Parliament, while socialist women attracted to the WSPU found themselves forced either to prioritise their allegiance to men from their own class within their party, or to follow the WSPU's directive to stop party work until the vote was won. Or at least that was the national picture. Locally, it is possible to discern occasions when individual women circumnavigated these choices, buoyed up by support networks of close friendships and political camaraderie. Their actions demonstrate that political activism is rarely as simple as studies of national movements would have us believe.

Liberal Party Women

Local Liberal women were in a very difficult position in 1905. The election of a Liberal government should have given them cause for celebration, but many of them were committed suffragists and the government was somewhat reticent on this question. Furthermore, the local party was in decline following a series of municipal defeats. Conseqeuently members had to be very careful in any criticism of government policy for fear of being left open to accusations of furthering the local Liberal demise.

By 1905 the WLF had local branches at Wavertree, West Toxteth, East Toxteth and Birkenhead. Kirkdale and Walton had folded but had been replaced at Waterloo and West Derby in 1906, making a total of six branches which remained until the First World War. Membership of these provided women with direct political experience and they continued their successful work as Liberals on the Boards of Guardians. However, this often resulted in the WLF losing some of its best workers. In January 1905, for example, Miss Japp resigned the Chair of East Toxteth WLF ‘to the great regret of all, [due to] pressure of work’ as a Guardian.