ELECTORAL REFORM IN THE UK

The three parliamentary reform Acts introduced in 19th-century Britain (in

1832, 1867 and 1884 respectively) satisfied moderate reformers rather than radicals.

In early-19th-century Britain very few people had the right to vote.

• A survey conducted in 1780 revealed that the electorate in England and Wales consisted of just 214,000 people - less than 3% of the total population of approximately 8 million.

• In Scotland the electorate was even smaller: in 1831 a mere 4,500 men, out of a population of more than 2.6 million people, were entitled to vote in parliamentary elections.

Rotten Boroughs, Pocket Boroughs and Constituencies with no representation

• Large industrial cities such as Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester did not have a single MP between them, whereas 'rotten boroughs' such as Dunwich in Suffolk (which had a population of 32 in 1831) were still sending two MPs to Westminster.

• There was much unhappiness about the “Rotten Borough”, a sparsely populated area, often one in which most of the people had left to live in the cities. For example, Old Sarum in Wiltshire had 3 houses and seven voters.

In 1298 the tiny port of Seaford had been granted the right to send two Members to Parliament. until the Reform Act of 1832

Pressure for reform

During the late 18th century and the early 19th century, pressure for parliamentary reform grew rapidly.

Some of it came from men who already had a large say in how Britain was run:

Country gentlemen angry about the use of patronage at Westminster

Manufacturers and businessmen keen to win political influence to match their economic power.

• The issue of parliamentary reform reached a wider audience, particularly after the French Revolution.

• Radical reformers demanded that all men be given the right to vote.

• Reform groups such as the Sheffield Corresponding Society (founded in December 1791) and the London Corresponding Society (founded in January 1791) were committed to universal 'manhood’ suffrage.

The “Peterloo Masacre”

• Radical public speaker Henry Hunt spoke at numerous political meetings on the same theme.

• During August 1819, at one such gathering in St Peter's Field, Manchester, local yeomanry attacked the crowd, killing 11 people.

• After the 'Peterloo Massacre', as this incident became known in radical circles, the government passed a series of repressive measures, and parliamentary reform still seemed a distant prospect.

At a peaceful and massive meeting - around 50-60,000 - in Manchester’s St. Peter’s Field in 1819, demanding Reform, troops attacked the assembly and killed nine men and two women, and wounded 400.

The SIX ACTS• Far from reviewing the error of his

resistance to reforms, Tory Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool responded to Peterloo by rushing in the 6 acts.

• This law forbade meetings of more than 50 people, extended the power of summary conviction by magistrates, made ‘blasphemous and seditious libel” a transportable [usually to Australia] offence, and placed a heavy tax on newspapers.

• Lord Liverpool’s henchman and foreign secretary from 1812-1822 was Lord Castlereagh about whom Shelley wrote : “I met Murder on the way; He had a mask like Castlereagh.”

(1) Training Prevention Act A measure which made any person attending a gathering for the purpose of training or drilling liable to arrest. People found guilty of this offence could be transportated for seven years.

(2) Seizure of Arms Act A measure that gave power to local magistrates to search any property or person for arms.

(3) Seditious Meetings Prevention Act A measure which prohibited the holding of public meetings of more than fifty people without the consent of a sheriff or magistrate.

(4) The Misdemeanours Act A measure that attempted to reduce the delay in the administration of justice.

(5) The Basphemous and Seditious Libels Act A measure which provided much stronger punishments, including banishment for publications judged to be blaspemous or sedtious.

(6) Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act A measure which subjected certain radical publications which had previously avoided stamp duty by publishing opinion and not news, to such duty.

The Reform Act of 1832• The Prime Minister, Lord Grey, supported

reform to 'prevent the necessity of revolution' and was responsible for the first (or 'Great') Reform Act of 1832.

• However, the Act gave the vote in towns only to men who occupied property with an annual value of £10, which excluded six adult males out of seven from voting.

The passing of the Act was a mixture of political circumstance and popular pressure. Divisions in the anti-reform Tory Party allowed the veteran Whig reformer, Lord Grey, to become Prime Minister in 1830.But , his Reform Bill was rejected by the Tory-dominated House of Lords. It was the agitation from extra-parliamentary radicals in the country at large that finally convinced a skeptical king and hostile Lords that reform was necessary.

The Chartists• The six-point program of

included demands for universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and voting by secret ballot. During the 1830s and 1840s, when Chartism was at its most influential, meetings to discuss 'constitutional reform' took place in towns and cities across Britain.

• On 2 May 1842, the second of the three great national Chartist petitions demanding the Six Points was presented to Parliament. Chartism was at its peak. The 2nd petition ran to 3,315,752 names, was six miles long.The petition was carried to the Houses of Parliament on the shoulders of 16 trade union delegates, and was so large that the doors to the House of Commons had to be dismantled for it to enter the chamber.

• Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, the great radical MP and friend of the Chartist movement presented the petition. But his motion for the petitioners to be heard at the bar of the House was defeated by 287 votes to just 49.

This 1830s print illustrates the perceived hypocrisy of the anti-slavery campaign. To the right, a group of people appear to be happy despite their enslavement. In sharp contrast, to the left, a British family is burdened with taxation and poverty. The man in the centre invites the viewer to consider the situation: ‘Think of the poor suffering Affican [sic] called a Slave unpossess’d of any of the rights & privileges that you enjoy, while you sit under the vine of your Reform Bill and the fig-tree of your Magna Chart [sic]. He knows nothing of such blessings’.

The Hyde Park Railings Affair 1865• The Reform League was established in 1865, and wanted universal

male suffrage and secret ballots for every vote. There was a huge meeting of supporters of the Reform League in Hyde Park on 23 July 1866.

• The Home Secretary declared it to be an illegal meeting and issued a Notice, but the Reform League pressed ahead regardless. The procession started from the Reform League’s headquarters in Adelphi Terrace, and went up Regent Street.

• When the group arrived at Hyde Park, the Marble Arch entrance, 1,500 police constables guarded the Park’s gates. The gates were chained and entry to Hyde Park was refused. Determined to enter the Park, several of the protesters pushed the railings around the gate, and the railings fell in. Protesters launched themselves into Hyde Park despite the efforts of the police to prevent them from doing so.

• Two other parts of the demonstration broke into the Park at the same time, one from Knightsbridge, and one from Park Lane.

• As well as the protesters themselves, a lot of people who had been standing and watching the protest decided that the closing of Hyde Park was unreasonable and attempted to join in the storming. An estimated 200,000 people managed to get into the Hyde Park.

• The police called for army support, and the Horse Guard Blues arrived. The soldiers did not intervene despite the police being stoned by the group.

• Generally, the Reform League was a middle class movement, and violence was strongly discouraged.

The “Hyde Park Railings Affair” was reported widely in the press and increased support for the Reform League immensely.

The Second Reform Act 1867• Described by Tory politician Lord Derby described as 'a leap in the dark’, it

enfranchised all male house owners in both urban and rural areas and added 6 million people to the voting registers - fell some way short of introducing universal manhood suffrage-- only two in every five Englishmen had the vote in 1870.

The Third Reform Act (1884)

• Enfranchised all male house owners in both urban and rural areas and added 6 million people to the voting registers. This still fell some way short of introducing universal manhood suffrage.

10, Downing Street,Whitehall,Jan 4. 1884Mr Gladstone submits his humble duty to Your Majesty, and humbly reports that the Cabinet met this day to consider some leading points of Parliamentary business for the approaching Session. They advise that the first great measure of the year should be a Bill for extending to the Counties the occupation franchise, and also the lodger franchise, now enjoyed in Boroughs, and for rendering it uniform as far as may be in town and country, and throughout the Three Kingdoms. …

The Third Reform Act (1884)

• enfranchised all male house owners in both urban and rural areas and added 6 million people to the voting registers - fell some way short of introducing universal manhood suffrage.

Farm laborers voting for the first time Illustrated London News(1884)

The Ballot Act of 1872

• The changes made in the British political system between 1832 and 1884 increased the electorate from approximately 366,000 in England and Wales in 1831 to slightly fewer than 8 million in 1885. Parliamentary seats were redistributed to give greater weight to larger towns and cities. Also, the Ballot Act of 1872, which introduced secret ballots, made it far more difficult for voters to be bribed or intimidated.

William Hogarth: An Election: The Polling (1754)

Religion blocked many from voting or holding office

• In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Roman Catholics were denied the right to vote from 1728 to 1793, and the right to sit in parliament until 1829. The anti-Catholic policy was justified on the grounds that the loyalty of Catholics supposedly lay with the Pope rather than the national monarch.

• In England and Ireland several Acts practically disenfranchised non-Anglicans or non-Protestants by imposing an oath before admission to vote or to run for office.

• The 1672 and 1678 TEST ACTS forbade non-Anglicans from holding public offices, the 1727 Catholics (Papists') voting rights were denied in Ireland, but were restored only in 1788.

• Jews could not even be naturalized. An attempt was made to change this situation, but the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753 provoked such reactions that it was repealed the next year.

“Nonconformists” (Methodists, Presbybterians, Quakers) were only allowed to run for elections to the House of Commons in 1828, Catholics in 1829 and Jews in 1858. Benjamin Disraeli (portrayed here in a l930s movie) could only begin his political career in 1837 because he had been converted to Anglicanism at the age of 12.

Universal Suffrage comes in the 20th century

• Finally, at the Turn of the Century, the franchise was expanded in most of the UK.

• Women received the right to vote, after considerable agitation, after World War I.