Reform Acts

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The Reform Acts (or Reform Bills, before they were passed) are legislation enacted in the United Kingdom in the 19th and 20th century to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. When short titles were introduced for these acts, they were usually Representation of the People Act.

Contents

These began with the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, to increase the electorate for the House of Commons and remove certain inequalities in representation. The bill of 1832 disfranchised many boroughs which enjoyed undue representation and increased that of the large towns, at the same time extending the franchise. It was put through Parliament by the Whigs. The bill of 1867 was passed by the Conservatives under the urging of the Liberals, while that of 1882 was introduced by the Liberals and passed in 1884. These latter two bills provided for a more democratic representation.

Following the First World War, the Reform Act 1918 was enacted with cross-party unanimity. It enfranchised all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30. Ten years later, the Reform Act 1928, passed by the Conservatives, resulted in universal suffrage with a voting age of 21. In 1969, the United Kingdom became the first major democratic country to lower its age of franchise to 18 in the Reform Act 1969 passed by the Labour government.

Internationally, the Parliament of the United Kingdom and its Westminster system played a "vanguard role" with worldwide influence on the spread of democracy, thus it is often known as "The mother of parliaments".

Background

Percentage of the population of the United Kingdom registered to vote at general elections, 1832-2010 UK parliamentary franchise (1832-2010).pdf
Percentage of the population of the United Kingdom registered to vote at general elections, 1832–2010

In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, before 1832, fewer than one adult male in ten was eligible to vote in parliamentary elections. [1] Moreover, the franchise varied a great deal between England (which included Wales), where it was wider, and Scotland and Ireland, where it was narrower. [2] [3] A few boroughs gave the vote to all male householders, but many parliamentary seats were under the control of a small group or sometimes a single rich aristocrat. Reforms had been proposed in the 18th century, both by radicals such as John Wilkes and by more conservative politicians such as William Pitt the Younger. However, there was strong opposition to reform, especially after the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789–1799). The cause was continued after 1792 by the London Corresponding Society.

Eventually, the parliamentary franchise was expanded and made more uniform through a series of Reform Acts beginning with the Great Reform Act in 1832. [4] These acts extended voting rights to previously disenfranchised citizens. Sources refer to up to six "Reform Acts", [5] [6] [7] although the earlier three in 1832, 1867/68 and 1884, are better known by this name. [note 1] Some other acts related to electoral matters also became known as Reform Acts. [12] [13] [note 2]

The following Acts of Parliament are known as Reform Acts:

There are many other electoral reform Acts that changed the electoral system in the United Kingdom. [note 3] Such legislation typically used "Representation of the People Act" as the short title, by which name the 1918, 1928 and other acts in the 20th century are better known. [21] [22] [23] The title Representation of the People Act was adopted in other countries of, or formerly part of, the British Empire through the spread of the Westminster parliamentary system. [24] [25] [26] The Parliament of the United Kingdom played a "vanguard role" with worldwide influence on the spread of democracy, thus it is often known as "the mother of parliaments". [27]

1832 Reform Act

The 1832 Reform Act for England and Wales was the most controversial of the electoral reform acts passed by the Parliament. Similar Acts were passed the same year for Scotland, and Ireland. They were put through Parliament by the Whigs. The Acts reapportioned Parliament in a way fairer to the cities of the old industrial north, which had experienced tremendous growth. The Act also did away with most of the "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs such as Old Sarum , which with only seven voters, all controlled by the local squire, was still sending two members to Parliament. This act not only re-apportioned representation in Parliament, thus making that body more accurately represent the citizens of the country, but also gave the power of voting to those lower in the social and economic scale, for the act extended the right to vote (in the boroughs) to any long-term holders of tenements of at least £10 annual value, adding 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000. Annual value here refers to the income that the land could be expected to earn if let, in a year. [28] As many as one man in five, though by some estimates still only one in seven, now had the right to vote. [1]

The agitation preceding and following the First Reform Act made many people consider fundamental issues of society and politics. The bill allowed the middle classes to share power with the upper classes; for many conservatives, this was revolutionary. Some historians argue that this transfer of power achieved in Britain and Ireland what the French Revolution of 1848 eventually achieved in France.

Charles Dickens observed these events at first hand as a shorthand Parliamentary reporter. The novel Middlemarch , by Mary Ann Evans ( George Eliot ) is set in the 1830s and mentions the struggle over the Reform Bills, though not as a major topic. Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical , set in 1832, is a novel explicitly about the Great Reform Act.

1867 Reform Act

The Chartists campaigned from 1838 for a wider reform. The movement petered out in the 1850s, but achieved most of its demands in the longer run. Legislative bills were introduced by the Conservatives under the urging of the Liberals. The 1867/8 Acts for England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland extended the right to vote still further down the class ladder. In England and Wales, the reforms added just short of a million voters, including many workingmen, which doubled the electorate to almost two million. [1]

Like the Great Reform Act before it, the Second Reform Act also created major shock waves in contemporary British culture. In works such as Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy and John Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olive , contemporary authors debated whether the shift of power would create democracy that would, in turn, destroy high culture.

1884 Reform Act

A further Reform Bill was introduced in 1882 by the Liberals. It was passed by the Conservatives in 1884 becoming the Third Reform Act. It was the first electoral reform act to apply to the United Kingdom as a whole. Only with this Act did a majority of adult males gain the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Along with the 1885 Redistribution Act, this tripled the electorate again, giving the vote to most agricultural laborers. [1]

1918, 1928 and 1969 Reform Acts

By the end of the 19th century and in they early 20th century, voting was coming to be regarded as a right rather than the property of the privileged but the First World War delayed further reforms. After the War, women were granted voting rights with cross-party unanimity in the Act of 1918, the Fourth Reform Act, which enfranchised all men aged over 21 and women over 30. This last piece of gender discrimination was eliminated 10 years later by the Equal Franchise Act 1928, the Fifth Reform Act, passed by the Conservatives. [1]

The voting age was lowered in 1969 by the Labour government in the Sixth Reform Act, making Britain the first major democratic nation to extend voting rights to all adults aged 18 or over. [29] [30] [31]

Modern usage

The periodic redrawing of constituency boundaries is now dealt with by a permanent Boundary Commission in each part of the United Kingdom, rather than a Reform Act. [32]

Some people in Britain, mostly associated with the Liberal Democrats political party, have called for a new "Great Reform Act" to introduce electoral changes they favour. These would include lowering the minimum voting age to 16 and introducing proportional representation, which are also supported by the Green Party of England and Wales. [27] [33] [34] [35]

See also

Notes

  1. Various sources, books and texts commonly use this description. [8] [9] [10] [11]
  2. For the narrative history see Llewellan Woodward (1961), The Age of Reform, 1815–1870, 2nd ed.; Asa Briggs (1959), The Age of Improvement 1783–1867.
  3. See the information box at the bottom of the article.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reform Act 1832</span> UK law reforming the electoral system

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suffrage</span> Right to vote in public and political elections

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums. In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">House of Commons</span> Type of legislative assembly

The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. The leader of the majority party in the House of Commons by convention becomes the prime minister. Other parliaments have also had a lower house called the "House of Commons".

Universal suffrage or universal franchise ensures the right to vote for as many people bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the "one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion of the young and non-citizens. At the same time, some insist that more inclusion is needed before suffrage can be truly universal. Democratic theorists, especially those hoping to achieve more universal suffrage, support presumptive inclusion, where the legal system would protect the voting rights of all subjects unless the government can clearly prove that disenfranchisement is necessary. Universal full suffrage includes both the right to vote, also called active suffrage, and the right to be elected, also called passive suffrage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation of the People Act 1884</span> United Kingdom law reforming the electoral system

In the United Kingdom under the premiership of William Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884, also known informally as the Third Reform Act, and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further extended the suffrage in the UK after the Derby government's Reform Act 1867. Taken together, these measures extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, more than doubling the electorate in the counties, and essentially established the modern one member constituency as the normal pattern for parliamentary representation.

The Radicals were a loose parliamentary political grouping in Great Britain and Ireland in the early to mid-19th century who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reform Act 1867</span> United Kingdom law reforming the electoral system in England and Wales

The Representation of the People Act 1867, known as the Reform Act 1867 or the Second Reform Act, is an act of the British Parliament that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first time. It took effect in stages over the next two years, culminating in full commencement on 1 January 1869.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation of the People Act 1918</span> UK law reforming the electoral system

The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act. The Act extended the franchise in parliamentary elections, also known as the right to vote, to men aged over 21, whether or not they owned property, and to women aged over 30 who resided in the constituency whilst occupying land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did. At the same time, it extended the local government franchise to include women aged over 30 on the same terms as men. It came into effect at the 1918 general election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Kingdom constituencies</span> Various types of electoral area in the UK

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928</span> United Kingdom law reforming the electoral system

The Representation of the People Act 1928 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. This act expanded on the Representation of the People Act 1918 which had given some women the vote in Parliamentary elections for the first time after World War I. It is sometimes referred to as the Fifth Reform Act.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation of the People Act 1969</span> United Kingdom law reforming the electoral system

The Representation of the People Act 1969 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that lowered the voting age to 18 years. This statute is sometimes called the Sixth Reform Act.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representation of the People Act</span> Short title for electoral legislation of the Parliament of the United Kingdom

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redistribution of Seats Act 1885</span> United Kingdom law reforming the electoral system

The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was a piece of electoral reform legislation that redistributed the seats in the House of Commons, introducing the concept of equally populated constituencies, a concept in the broader global context termed equal apportionment, in an attempt to equalise representation across the UK. It was associated with, but not part of, the Representation of the People Act 1884.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom</span> Movement to gain women the right to vote

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elections in the United Kingdom</span>

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References

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  27. 1 2 Stone, Greg (30 July 2009). "It's time for the next Great Reform Act". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  28. "The Reform Act of 1832". www.historyhome.co.uk. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
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  30. Loughran, Thomas; Mycock, Andrew; Tonge, Jonathan (3 November 2021). "Lowering the voting age: three lessons from the 1969 Representation of the People's Act". British Politics and Policy at LSE. Retrieved 31 December 2022. 'Votes at 18' was the last major extension of the UK franchise and is therefore an important element of the history of UK democracy from the 1832 Great Reform Act onwards.
  31. Bingham, Adrian (25 June 2019). "'The last milestone' on the journey to full adult suffrage? 50 years of debates about the voting age". History & Policy. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
  32. Johnston, Neil (1 February 2021). "Constituency boundary reviews and the number of MPs".
  33. Toynbee, Polly (31 January 2014). "Giving 16-year-olds the vote can be Labour's Great Reform Act". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  34. "A new Great Reform Act is needed to limit the absurdities of our constitution". The Independent. 6 May 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  35. "Electoral Reform: Is Proportional Representation The Solution?". Green Party of England and Wales. 3 February 2023. Retrieved 29 April 2023.

Further reading