Poor Lord Cromer. The great imperial proconsul returned to England in 1907 after more than two decades governing Egypt to find his homeland awash with suffragists and socialists, Irish nationalists and trade unionists. The swelling women's suffrage movement especially appalled him. Few things were more likely to undermine the British Empire, he was convinced, than the entry of women into the Westminster Parliament. Someone had to stop them, and Cromer, accustomed to decisive action, thought he was the man. He raised the money and the troops, enlisted Lord Curzon (conveniently back from ruling India) as second-in-command, and planned the campaign - but in the end the women proved too much for him. 'I am physically incapable of doing eternal battle with all these rampaging women,' he wrote despairingly to Curzon in 1912.

LRB 20 March 2008 | PDF Download