EQUAL FRANCHISE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 124, 30 May 1927, Page 9

EQUAL FRANCHISE

MR. BALDWIN'S OPINION

VOTES FOR WOMEtf AT 21

NO APPREHENSION

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, 29th May. Tho Prime Minister (Mr. Baldwin), addressing a meeting of Conservative

women at the Albert Hall yesterday, made reference to.' the proposals for giving thp vote to women at the age of 21, thus putting them on equal with men. The Prime Minister said that he was aware that there waa a strong

leeling that the franchise for both sexes should bo given at the age of 25 rather than at 21. It might well bo that if the Government were giving the franchise to-day to the people of this country for the first time that proposal would be worth consideration. Uhero would be a full opportunity for Parliament to express an opinion on this when the Government's Bill came before it. But he did not believe that it was practical politics to take away the vote from the men of 21 in a democratic country where that franchise had existed for centuries. He, for one, not only looked with %no apprehenson at the enfranchisement of both sexes as the same age. He welcomed it. It was inconsistent to open, all professions to women it the same age as men, and yet refuse them equal voting, rights He pointed out that, in all the British Dominions except South Africa, and in the United States, that was to say,' in practically all countries inhabited by English-speaking people, the full franchise was in force at the age of 21.