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6th February 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918. It was this legislation that enabled all men and some women over the age of 30 to vote for the first time and paved the way for universal suffrage 10 years later.  Marian Pallister, vice chair of Justice and Peace Scotland writes this weeks blog and reflects on how the memory of this time has passed down the generations of her family.

My mother had several very vivid memories of her first five years. Born in 1913, she lived in a world at war, and while her parents were not directly involved, one of those childhood memories was telling someone that ‘if the Germans come, I’ll stick darning needles in their eyes’.

In 1918 the war was still being fought, but in the February (her birthday month) something very positive happened. She may not have known it then, but it was one of the best birthday gifts that any child could receive – the right to a future in which she (or he) would have the right to determine the course of the country by exercising their vote.

The vote was not given to all women in 1918, but there were 8.5 million of them who met the qualifications of the Representation of the People Act. My grandmother was one of them. She was over 30 and owned property. Another of the qualifications was to be a graduate voting in a university constituency, but those women were few and far between – even though my grandmother was a teacher, she couldn’t claim that criterion to get inside the ballot box.

And of course, there were also 5.6 million men who were also enabled to vote. For them, the voting age was dropped to 21 (there would have been a revolution had the young survivors of the war not been given the vote) and the property qualification for men was abolished.

My mother had very Victorian parents who had married late in life. My grandfather was born in 1853, his wife in 1876. He owned a haulage business and despite being married, she was allowed to continue teaching in the local school because so many male teachers were away fighting. It would have been very natural for a couple then already aged 65 and 42 to let such new fangled laws pass them by.

But according to my mother’s most vivid childhood memory, when they opened the doors of the polling station in December 1918 for the first general election in which she was entitled to cast her vote, my grandmother was in the vanguard. Perhaps more importantly, she took her little daughter with her. My mother, who died at the age of 84, never forgot the feeling of how important that occasion was.

Nor did she ever miss the opportunity to vote. And when I was a young woman in the 1970s welcoming the new equality laws, she was as emotionally overwhelmed as she had been as a child watching her mother making that giant leap for womankind.

And yet, as I drove home tonight the main news story on Radio 4 was inequality of pay. The ‘Me Too’ campaign has revealed a disdain for women that just shouldn’t exist a century after women were given the right to take part in the democratic process.

Voting rights for women were staggered throughout Europe. In the UK, women younger than my grandmother waited another decade for the vote: those over 21 did not get the vote until 1928. The Scandinavian countries were ahead of Britain (Finland as early as 1906, Denmark and Iceland in 1915). Dutch and American women were enfranchised at the end of the First World War but in France, universal suffrage came in 1944 and in Italy, Romania, Belgium and the then Yugoslavia women had to wait until 1946.

And of course, in many countries, universal suffrage is still to be fought for, and very fundamental women’s rights must still be won.

I don’t quite know what I’d say to my grandmother as we celebrate a century of suffrage this February. I’m a bit ashamed that I’ve not spoken more loudly to decrease the very long list of what must still be achieved in the name of gender equality here and around the world – because the justice of universal suffrage leads to peace.

Jim McKendrick, President of The Socieity of St Vincent de Paul in Scotland writes our latest blog in which he reflects on God's beautiful gift of creation.

"He sprinkles snow like birds alighting" (Eccl 43:18). Whenever I read these words that rejoice in the Glory of God to be found in his Creation, I am reminded of a winter's evening in early January.

Along with a group of Tanzanian students, I emerged from a university building into a snowfall. Having never seen snow before, they were ecstatic. They began to act like small children. Laughing and rejoicing, they caught snowflakes in their hands, marvelling at the lightness and delicacy of each snowflake and how quickly it melted away. They turned their faces to the sky so that the flakes could touch their faces and melt. Finally, inevitably, a snowball fight commenced. Their joy reminded me of the grandeur of God and the wonder of Creation and brought home the rhythm of the seasons and the way Nature renews itself in accordance with God's creative genius.

Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si emphasises that creative genius. The first social encyclical in the Catholic Church to address care for the environment and environmental justice in a direct and specific way, it complements Catholic Social Teaching that our responsibility as good stewards of creation is to care for our world and not ‘steal’ resources from future generations.  Francis calls us to an ecological conversion, and invites us to praise God for the gifts of creation.

He encourages us to contemplate the beauty, complexity and interconnectivity of Creation; to see ourselves as in it and of it. Drawing on his Jesuit/ Ignatian spirituality background and the spirituality of St. Francis, the Pope invites us to open our eyes and hearts to discover in Creation the loving presence and self-gift of God. He is convinced, as was Ignatius, that we will then find our hearts stirred with grateful love.

He writes, "The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person's face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things. Saint Bonaventure teaches us that contemplation deepens the more we feel the working of God's grace within our hearts and the better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves "(223)...

This passage resonates well with Ignatian spirituality: that God is at work everywhere - in work, relationships, culture, the arts, creation itself. God's presence is in the everyday activities of ordinary life. God is an active God, always at work, inviting us to an ever-deeper relationship. As Ignatius said,  "All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully."

Pope Francis says the problem is of concern to all, but Christianity has something special to offer in its understanding that nature is a tremendous gift of a personal Creator, to be conserved and developed for the purposes God has ordained. He describes how everything fits together; and explains what this ought to mean for our attitudes, goals and actions:

"We have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

 The changing of the seasons prompted me to reflect on God who is always present in the world, continuously supporting what He has created, working  to sustain what He has created in order that it continue. Yet somehow, He transcends our understanding of the natural world, as the Prologue to John's Gospel so beautifully illustrates. The Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins expressed it:

"He Fathers-forth whose beauty is past change.  Praise Him!"

Don't miss this week's blog, in it Betty Gillick of the Motherwell Justice and Peace Group tracks the events which lead her to welcoming and supporting refugees from Syria into her community.  A truly inspiring read.