The ‘Blood Vote’ was probably the single most influential piece of campaign material produced by the anti-conscription campaign. It encouraged women to vote according to their own identity as mothers.

This cartoon was famous as soon as it was produced, and has been ever since. Ted Holloway, who at the time was Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall, later said that it was “the most effective single piece of propaganda for our side, which decided the votes of perhaps tens of thousands of women”.

The handbill was based on a poem written by William Robert Winspear, Secretary of the Australian Socialist Party, and was drawn by radical Sydney artist Claude Marquet. It was authorised by John Curtin in his role as Secretary of the Anti-Conscription Campaign.

Further Information

The Blood Vote

Why is your face so white, mother?
Why do you choke for breath?
O I have dreamt in the night, my son
That I doomed a man to death

Why do you hide your hand, mother?
And crouch above it in dread?
It beareth a dreadful branch, my son
With the dead man's blood 'tis red

I hear his widow cry in the night
I hear his children weep
And always within my sight, O God!
The dead man's blood doth leap

They put the dagger into my grasp.
It seemed but a pencil then
I did not know it was a fiend a gasp
For the priceless blood of men

They gave me the ballot paper.
The grim death-warrant of doom,
And I smugly sentenced the man to death
In that dreadful little room.

I put it inside the Box of Blood
Nor thought of the man I'd slain
Till at midnight came like a whelming flood
God's word and Brand of Cain

O little son! O my little son!
Pray God for your Mother's soul
That the scarlet stain may be white again
In God's great Judgement Roll