Metropolitan counties are a subdivision of England which were originally used for local government. There are six metropolitan counties: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
The 1906 United Kingdom general election was held from 12 January to 8 February 1906.
The School Board for London, commonly known as the London School Board (LSB), was an institution of local government and the first directly elected body covering the whole of London.
A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries.
A municipal borough was a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in Scotland from 1833 to 1975 with the reform of royal burghs and creation of police burghs.
Local education authorities (LEAs) were defined in England and Wales as the local councils responsible for education within their jurisdictions. The term was introduced by the Education Act 1902 which transferred education powers from school boards to existing local councils.
The Greater Manchester County Council (GMCC) was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater Manchester from 1974 to 1986. A strategic authority, with responsibilities for roads, public transport, planning, emergency services and waste disposal, it was composed of 106 directly elected members drawn from the ten metropolitan boroughs of Greater Manchester. The Greater Manchester County Council shared power with ten lower-tier district councils, each of which directed local matters. It was also known as the Greater Manchester Council (GMC) and the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County Council (GMMCC).
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC) is the local authority for the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. The council is currently run by a Liberal Democrat minority administration. At the 2023 local elections, the Liberal Democrats gained two more seats, increasing their lead over the Labour Party to six seats, and retaining minority control. This lead is now five seats after one of the Liberal Democrats’ councillors resigned the whip, days after being re-elected. The Liberal Democrats currently have 29 seats, Labour 24, and the Heald Green Ratepayers, Greens and the Edgeley Community Association each holding 3. There is 1 independent.
The Local Government Act 1894 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level under the Local Government Act 1888. The 1894 legislation introduced elected councils at district and parish level.
The London Government Act 1899 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed the administration of the capital. The Act divided the County of London into 28 metropolitan boroughs, replacing the 41 parish vestries and District Boards of Works administering the area. The legislation also transferred a few powers from the London County Council to the boroughs, and removed a number of boundary anomalies. The first elections to the new boroughs were held on 1 November 1900.
Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme-Elmy was a life-long campaigner and organiser, significant in the history of women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She wrote essays and some poetry, using the pseudonyms E and Ignota.
Salford was, from 1844 to 1974, a local government district in the county of Lancashire in the northwest of England, covering the city of Salford. It was granted city status in 1926.
School boards were ad hoc public bodies in England and Wales between 1870 and 1902, which established and administered elementary schools.
The history of local government in England is one of gradual change and evolution since the Middle Ages. England has never possessed a formal written constitution, with the result that modern administration is based on precedent, and is derived from administrative powers granted to older systems, such as that of the shires.
A movement to fight for women's right to vote in the United Kingdom finally succeeded through acts of Parliament in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
Dr John Greenwood Shipman was an English barrister and Liberal Party politician.
The Women's Local Government Society was a British campaign group which aimed to get women into local government. Its initial focus was on county councils but its remit later covered other local government roles such as school boards.
The Women's Emancipation Union was founded by Elizabeth Clarke Wolstenholme Elmy in September 1891, following an infamous court case. Regina v Jackson, known colloquially as the Clitheroe Judgement, occurred when Edmund Jackson abducted his wife in a bid to enforce his conjugal rights, long before the concept of marital rape existed. The court of appeal freed Mrs Jackson under habeas corpus. Recognising the significance of this judgement in relation to coverture, the principle that a wife's legal personhood was subsumed in that of her husband, Wolstenholme left the Women's Franchise League to form this new women's campaigning group.
The Women's suffrage movement in India fought for Indian women's right to political enfranchisement in Colonial India under British rule. Beyond suffrage, the movement was fighting for women's right to stand for and hold office during the colonial era. In 1918, when Britain granted limited suffrage to women property holders, the law did not apply to British citizens in other parts of the Empire. Despite petitions presented by women and men to the British commissions sent to evaluate Indian voting regulations, women's demands were ignored in the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms. In 1919, impassioned pleas and reports indicating support for women to have the vote were presented by suffragists to the India Office and before the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and Commons, who were meeting to finalize the electoral regulation reforms of the Southborough Franchise Committee. Though they were not granted voting rights, nor the right to stand in elections, the Government of India Act 1919 allowed Provincial Councils to determine if women could vote, provided they met stringent property, income, or educational levels.
Edith Mary Sutton (1862–1957) was the first woman to become a councillor in England, the first female mayor in Reading, and a suffragist.
