How far did Britain become more democratic between the mid nineteenth century and 1928?
How far did Britain become more democratic between the mid-nineteenth century and 1928?
Britain became fairly democratic between the mid-nineteenth century and 1928 and many changes and improvements helped this to happen. These included a gradually extending franchise, with more and more people gaining the right to vote, easier access to information raising awareness of national issues, and fairer choice for voters, for example, the Secret Ballot Act of 1872. Other important improvements included increasing participation with a wider variety of people able to become an MP. Finally, an improvement in fairness greatly helped Britain to be more democratic. An example of this is the 1885 Redistribution of seats which made electing MPs much fairer. However, by 1928, changes still needed to be made for Britain to be fully democratic. For example, plural voting was still accepted and the House of Lords were still able to delay laws made by the House of Commons.
An important way in which Britain became more democratic was in extending the right to vote. The Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote to men owning property above a certain value and (male) lodgers paying rent above £10 a year. This meant that the vote was extended to skilled working men who could afford to live in property above that value and this resulted in the number of men who were entitled to vote increasing greatly. For example, the number of voters in Glasgow increased from 18,000 to 47,000. However, the majority of men were still unable to vote as few could afford to rent a property of this value. The Third Reform Act 1884 gave working class men in the countryside the same voting rights as those living in towns. Prime Minister William Gladstone, who proposed this reform, felt that the countrymen were “capable citizens, qualified for the vote and able to make good use of their power as a voter”. The reform caused the electorate to increase by 50 per cent and this removed any resent felt by those living in rural areas. However, women were still unable to vote at all and many men still could not vote as they could not afford to pay rent of £10 a year. The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave all men over the age of 21 the right to vote (and those aged 19, if they had been on active service in the armed forces). It also gave the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5 or graduates of British universities. The electorate increased to about 21 million, of which 8.4 million were women - about 40 per cent of the total voters. This act seemed a major victory for the Suffragist movement but, politically, women were still not equal to men in Britain – men could vote on an age qualification alone and nine years before women, who still had to ‘qualify’. Even then about 22 per cent of women of 30 years of age and above were denied the right to vote as they were not property owners. Ten years later, there was little opposition to the extension of the franchise to all women on the same terms as men. The heat had gone out of the issue and there seemed to reason to object to the further reform. In 1928, the Representation of the People Act was expanded and widened suffrage by giving women electoral equality with men. It gave the vote to all women who paid rates to the local government on the same terms as men. This meant they had to be over 21 years old, regardless of property ownership.
