Very little was done to make Britain more democratic after 1885 until the Liberal Government reformed the non-elected House of Lords in 1911 by Passing the Parliament Act 1911.. This was vital to the growth of democracy in Britain as the unelected chamber of the House of Lords, had the power to veto legislation from the elected government. The Liberal government 1906-11 found it increasingly difficult to get their budgets passed by the house of Lords which was mostly made up of Conservative Lords as they wanted to tax the rich to help relieve the poor of poverty.
Before 1872 voting was a public act. One reason for this was the idea that those given the privilege of voting were somehow the representatives of all the people living in their community and, as a result, everybody in the local community had the right to know how each voter had voted. Open voting, however, allowed and sometimes encouraged intimidation and opponents argued that it should be replaced by a secret ballot.
Historians agree that there was little interest in the secret ballot in Parliament until after the 1868 general election. The rowdiness and rioting, the flood of petitions protesting that bribery had taken place in particular constituencies and the trials in open court, caused the new Liberal government a good deal of heart-searching.
Following the 1868 general election, a Select Committee was set up to investigate conduct at elections and it was specifically asked to examine whether a secret ballot should be introduced. The Select Committee recommended that a secret ballot should be introduced and, after a battle in Parliament, the Ballot Act became law in 1872. As a result, electors were to vote secretly marking a printed ballot paper with a cross and placing it in a sealed ballot box. Votes were to be counted in the presence of the candidates’ agents.
The 1872 Ballot Act was a significant step because it reflected a change in attitude towards the vote, O’Leary argues that: “It was on the issue of the ballot that the Liberal Party as a whole came round to the radical view that the vote was a right, not a trust or a privilege.”
By replacing the Hustings with the polling both, the Act ensured that voting came to be seen more as “a political act rather than as a social occasion”. In addition, the Act was constitutionally important since it was an important step on the path to democracy. By enabling electors to vote as they chose rather than as others commanded, it made the electoral system more representative and democratic.
Historians agree that the amount of violence and intimidation during election campaigns was reduced as a result of the introduction of the secret ballot. But, they also agree that the Act did little to reduce bribery.
The abolition of voting by public declaration and its replacement by a system of voting by ballot was introduced by Gladstone’s Liberal government in 1872.
Radicals had long campaigned for this reform as a means of preventing the influencing, bribing and intimidation of voters through more discreet means of persuasion by aristocratic patrons.
The extension of the franchise in the boroughs in 1867 brought within the electorate working-class men who, it was feared, might be more susceptible to bribery than the more affluent middle-class voters. This is further supported in Source 7 giving the vote to 9 million new electorates and the W/C becoming the majority. This shows to what extent the Secret Ballot act made Britain more politically democratic.
There was also an element within the Liberal Party, personified by John Bright, who believed that the tenant farmers in the countries were obliged to vote for the landlords’ candidates through fear of eviction from their farms; The secret ballot, therefore, was considered to be essential first step towards the rooting out of corruption and influence in elections.
However, there are some arguments that the Secret Ballot Act of 1872 was not all good a needed some extra help in order to create political democracy. We can see this in source 8; it states that ‘transformed political practice’ – referring to the Corrupt and Illegal practices act of 1883, the redistribution act of 1885 and the franchise act of 1884. This shows how political democracy could not be achieved by just the Secret Ballot Act, it relied on further reforms in order to make an impact.
Also, Source 7 suggests that the Secret Ballot act did completely the opposite of creating a democracy, it shows us how ‘boundaries looped off suburban area, adding the to the boroughs, and the vote was still one in twelve men’. This shows how the political system was still corrupt and was not turning into a democracy at all.
In conclusion, I think that the Secret Ballot Act of 1872 created political democracy to some extent, but needed added support from further reforms. This is sustained in source 8. The problems faced in source 7 were needed to overcome the corruptness. The Secret Ballot act ‘opened the door’. In short, the Secret Ballot act did not help at all on its own, but worked perfectly with the Corrupt and Illegal practices act, and together, removed most Hustings and brawls from elections.
by
dsymes12 (student)
