SHOPPERS in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street were startled to see “suffragists” in period dress agitating in favour of proportional representation at the beginning of the Scottish Liberal Party’s campaign for electoral reform. The aim was to get people to sign a petition that would then be presented to Edward Short, the leader of the Commons at that time. Jenny Chapman, a member of the party’s national executive, told the Glasgow Herald: “Scottish liberals, both men and women, see themselves as suffragists campaigning for an equal value for every vote.”

Electoral reform was an issue that featured often in the newspaper that year. On October 22 there was a report about a one-man protest fast outside the Commons. The man, a Mr Campbell, who was campaigning for electoral reform, “refused an appeal to desist from an ever-so-slightly embarrassed Jeremy Thorpe,” the then Liberal leader. Thorpe told the man, who was half-Scottish, and had contested an English seat at the last election, that a dead candidate was no good to the party. The man conceded the point and agreed to see a doctor each day while continuing his diet of glucose and water.

“Who supports him?” mused the Herald. “The Scottish Liberal suffragettes, for a few. They sent him a telegram yesterday, saying ‘May your fighting Campbell spirit triumph over all short measures.”