Reform Acts and the expansion of the franchise 1832-1928
The Unreformed Electoral System
By the early nineteenth century, Britain’s system of parliamentary representation had not kept pace with population change. Many rotten boroughs returned MPs despite having almost no voters: Old Sarum in Wiltshire had seven voters and two MPs; Manchester, a growing industrial city with over 100,000 people, had none. The right to vote varied chaotically between constituencies — in some a man needed a forty-shilling freehold, in others any male householder could vote. Most working-class men and all women were excluded entirely.
The economic and social pressures of industrialisation made reform increasingly urgent. A rapidly growing urban working class had no representation. The fear of popular unrest — the French Revolution was a recent memory — made many MPs nervous about ignoring pressure for change.
A rotten borough was a constituency with almost no voters, often controlled by a single landlord. Old Sarum (Wiltshire) had seven voters and returned two MPs. Meanwhile Manchester, with over 100,000 inhabitants, had no MP at all. This made the pre-1832 Parliament deeply unrepresentative.
The Great Reform Act 1832
The Great Reform Act of 1832 was passed by Lord Grey’s Whig government after sustained popular pressure. It abolished the worst rotten boroughs, gave seats to the new industrial towns (Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield), and extended the vote in boroughs to men who occupied property worth at least £10 a year.
The Act raised the electorate by about half, from around 400,000 to around 650,000. But it remained a very partial reform: it said nothing about the secret ballot (votes were still cast publicly, leaving tenants vulnerable to landlord pressure), and it did not enfranchise working-class men or women. It was a reform that preserved property ownership as the qualification for political participation.
The Second Reform Act of 1867 was a much bolder step. Passed by Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative government, it extended the vote in boroughs to male householders and some lodgers, adding around a million new voters and giving the vote to many urban working-class men for the first time. Disraeli calculated that the newly enfranchised working class would be grateful and vote Conservative — a calculation that proved partly wrong.
William Gladstone’s Third Reform Act of 1884 extended the same franchise to rural areas, adding another 1.5 million voters. The Redistribution Act of 1885 followed, redrawing constituency boundaries to reflect population. By 1885, roughly two-thirds of adult men could vote — but no women, and not the poorest urban men.
Suffragists and Suffragettes
The campaign for women’s suffrage developed two distinct wings, which students must not confuse. The suffragists — the NUWSS led by Millicent Fawcett — pursued women’s votes through constitutional means: petitions, meetings, lobbying MPs, and peaceful demonstration. Fawcett had been campaigning since the 1860s and believed patient constitutional pressure would succeed.
The suffragettes — the WSPU founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst — took direct action: smashing windows, chaining themselves to railings, arson attacks on post boxes and empty buildings, and hunger strikes in prison. Emily Davison ran onto the racecourse during the Derby at Epsom on 4 June 1913 and died of her injuries four days later. Emmeline’s daughters Christabel and Sylvia both played prominent roles, though they later disagreed: Christabel led the militant campaign and then backed the war effort, while Sylvia worked with the labour movement and opposed the First World War.
Suffragists (NUWSS, led by Millicent Fawcett) used constitutional means — petitions and lobbying. Suffragettes (WSPU, led by Emmeline Pankhurst) used militant direct action — arson, window-smashing and hunger strikes. Do not use the two words as if they meant the same thing.
The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to all men over 21 and to women over 30 who met a property qualification. Around 8.4 million women gained the vote. The age and property bar on women was clearly discriminatory, but it prevented women — who outnumbered men after the war’s casualties — from forming a majority of the electorate.
Why 1918? Historians point to several factors: women’s vital contributions to the war effort (munitions, nursing, transport) made it impossible to deny their civic participation; the WSPU had suspended militancy during the war and thrown itself into patriotic service; the Representation of the People Act was also driven by the need to give the vote to millions of servicemen who had lost it by moving away from their homes. Full equal franchise came in 1928, when the Equal Franchise Act lowered the voting age for women to 21, equalising the franchise.