The remains of the Norman cathedral at Old Sarum in Wiltshire, which was abandoned in 1220 when the community moved down the hill to New Sarum, known today as Salisbury. Despite the move, Old Sarum continued to return two MPs to Westminster until 1832, when the seats were abolished. The land belonged until 1802 to the family of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the statesman who coined the term ‘rotten boroughs’ to refer to such constituencies and urged their reform.
Part 1 of 2
IN 1832, the controversial Reform Act was pushed through by Prime Minister Lord Grey. It was a wide-ranging overhaul of the way Britain voted for her MPs, necessitated by persistent abuse, and by the industrial revolution.
Hitherto, each constituency or ‘borough’ had decided who was eligible to vote according to its own conventions, usually reflecting property ownership of some kind. The Act standardised the rules and property qualifications nationwide, and increased the electorate by around two thirds to one in five adult males.
Constituency boundaries, which had not kept pace with Britain’s rapidly growing industrial towns, were also redrawn, assigning 143 seats to populated areas. Parliament’s total membership of 658 MPs was maintained by abolishing ‘rotten’ and ‘pocket’ boroughs – constituencies notorious for bribery, favouritism or absenteeism – and rural boroughs with dwindling populations.*
However, the Act committed a scandalous error: it explicitly enfranchised ‘male persons’. This restriction by sex, though almost universally assumed, had never been stated before, and was not reversed until 1928.
‘Pocket boroughs’ took their name from the accusation that the candidate would be ‘in the pocket’ of some wealthy landowner. The term ‘Rotten boroughs’ came from a speech by Pitt the Elder opposing Parliament’s taxing of America, in the course of which he referred to abuses in the borough system as ‘the rotten part of the constitution’ (On the Stamp Acts, January 14th, 1766).
Précis
The Reform Act of 1832 addressed abuses and inefficiencies in Parliamentary elections, by setting nationwide rules on eligibility to vote, abolishing redundant or corrupt constituencies, and ensuring that new industrial towns were representated. The franchise was also widened, but in the process Parliament stated for the first time as law that women could not vote, hitherto only a custom. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
One of the many ‘reenactors’ employed at Beamish Open Air Museum in County Durham, apparently lost in thought by the town gates. The museum recreates life in a northern industrial village in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Young working class women were among the last to be granted the right to vote, in 1928.
THE Reform Act of 1832 had done sterling work, yet women were barred from voting, and property tests still excluded four in five men, especially those working men whose labour powered the economy.
In 1867, a new Act made fifty-three more seats available to densely populated areas, and property qualifications were relaxed to include skilled workers. Eligible men now touched one in three, increased to forty percent by further legislation in 1884. Women were still excluded by law.
But the sacrifices made by men and women of all backgrounds during the Great War, and a defiant Suffragette movement, showed that sex, age and wealth had little to do with responsible citizenship.
Consequently, the Representation of the People Act of 1918 enfranchised every man over twenty-one, regardless of economic status, and women over thirty who were ratepayers or married to ratepayers. The following year, Nancy Astor became the first female MP, and in 1928, women were granted voting rights on the same terms as men.
Précis
The Reform Act of 1832 had been a beginning, but keeping pace with industrial and demographic change required further action in 1867 and 1884. The Great War accelerated the recognition that people of all social and economic classes contributed to society as responsible citizens, and in 1928 this led Parliament to extend the franchise to all adult men and women. (56 / 60 words)
