Parliamentary Reform in Britain, c. 1770-1918

Eric J. Evans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317886242
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Covers the momentous reforms in the British electoral system during the period from the Great Reform Act of 1832 to 1918 when women were given the vote. The study charts the series of Reform Acts right through the period, involving rather more attention to those important changes in the 1880s which are often underplayed.

PART ONE: ORIGINS

1 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE HISTORIANS

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON REFORM

As in other aspects of life, fashions in historical writing change. Not so long ago, it was possible to write about parliamentary reform in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by concentrating on the Acts themselves. The causes of each would be dutifully considered, the terms written down in as much detail as the scope of the book required, and the consequences for political parties and other aspects of high politics analysed. In much of the early writing, also, the implicit (and sometimes explicit) assumption was that, in explaining the causes and consequences of parliamentary reform, one was also charting progress. The story revealed the emergence of a parliamentary democracy, as each Act extended the franchise and, in some way or other, made votes more equal and voting ‘fairer’. It was perfectly possible to approach democracy by citing some of the key dates which are found in the chronology: 1832, 1867, 1872, 1883–85, 1918, 1928, and so on. Britain’s advanced system of government, which guarantees that mechanisms exist for the peaceful and orderly transfer of power, emerged in stages and could be held up as an example to others.

At the height of Britain’s power and influence in world affairs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, indeed, imperial statesmen saw it as one of their main duties to educate those fortunate enough to have been born in ‘the empire on which the sun never sets’ in the virtues of representative government. This was Britain’s main beneficent legacy not only to Kipling’s famous, though ironically intended, ‘lesser breeds without the law’, but also to its European neighbours. Britain had, after all, managed this subtle transformation without revolution; most of them had not. Historians of the early twentieth century rarely presented analyses as starkly or crudely as this, but important studies such as J. R. M. Butler’s The Passing of the Great Reform Bill [48] and G. S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform [44] were untroubled by any reflection that the reforms they were explaining did not produce a political system which was an improvement on the one which it replaced. For Butler, in particular, the emphasis was on the success of the Whig leaders in revolution and thus in putting Britain on the progressive route to non-violent change (see Chapter 4).

Emphases have radically changed. First, history writing in a more cynical and less self-confident age no longer seeks to chart ‘progress’ from a lesser to a greater state, not least because late twentieth-century society has become much more ambivalent about what constitutes progress. Secondly, much more attention was given to continuities rather than change. Thus, for example, the 1832 Reform Act in no real sense gave ‘power’ to the middle classes. Britain was ruled, from Westminster at least, for two generations after it by a parliament dominated by landowners and a Cabinet whose members remained predominantly aristocratic. As Hanham put it in 1969, ‘Everything possible was done [in 1832] to preserve the continuity of the great landed interests, which has dominated British politics since the seventeenth century’ [10 p. 12]. Similarly, although the 1867 and 1868 Reform Acts produced working-class majorities in many urban constituencies, the same political parties – Liberal and Conservative – remained the contenders for political power, at least outside Ireland with its rising nationalist party. The Labour Representation Committee was not founded until 1900; it changed its name to ‘the Labour Party’ in 1906. Before the First World War, this supposedly ‘working man’s party’ clung desperately to the coat tails of the Liberal party for political survival.

Thirdly, much more detailed work has been done at constituency level. Not surprisingly, this work has produced findings which do not point in the same direction. On the one hand, it is now clear that a significant number of parliamentary constituencies actually lost electors in the years after 1832. The new uniform borough franchise (see Chapter 4) excluded many working-class interests as pre-1832 voters died off. Thus, although big cities like Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds gained direct representation and, with it, some of the largest constituencies in the country, others like Bristol, Liverpool and Hull had a considerably smaller proportion of adult males registered to vote in the early 1860s than they had in 1832 [13 p. 57]. In smaller boroughs, like Lancaster and Tamworth, the size of the electorate had dropped sharply by the 1850s.

It has also been argued that the nature of the political process underwent damaging change so far as the lower orders were concerned. Not only did many quasi-democratic constituencies disappear; those crucial elements of ritual and theatre associated with the hustings and very public assertions of political allegiance were dissipated when large numbers of polling stations were provided within convenient distance of the uniformly propertied electorate. A politicised ‘crowd’ of voters and non-voters alike could no longer congregate in the county town [71]. Elections, by accident or design, were sanitised.

POPULAR PARTICIPATION

Furthermore, historians have begun to question how important the vote actually was to participation in the political process. After a decade of political protest in the 1960s, many student leaders realised that storming the ramparts of university senates, and being recognised there as voting members, brought them no closer to actual power than before. In some respects, indeed, lucid and considered cases presented to a vice-chancellor in the form of a letter or memorandum might have more practical effect than heated speeches backed up by a few votes in the formal decision-making bodies. The parallel with national politics in the nineteenth century is closer than it might seem. As O’Gorman and Vernon have demonstrated [39; 71; 122; 128), the absence of votes was no bar to political participation. MPs needed to take account of a wide range of interests if they wished to remain on good terms with their constituencies. The possession of the vote and the possession of political influence were not necessarily the same thing. Both before and after 1832, it is more important to understand the political climate than to count changes in the number of voters. The suffragettes of the early twentieth century produced brilliant propaganda which highlighted how educated, intelligent and public-spirited women were denied the vote while brutish, drunken ignorant men could use it [108]. In reality, such campaigns were at least as much about the assertion of women’s importance to a stable political system as they were to crosses on a ballot paper.

Growing concern with constituency politics was fortified by detailed studies of election statistics (psephology). Psephology made use of what historians quickly recognised was the vital raw material for such a study, the parliamentary ‘poll books’ which, in the years before the secret ballot was introduced in 1872, recorded who voted for whom. It was therefore possible to determine political allegiances both pre- and post-1832. This proved a vital new tool in determining how much the Great Reform Act changed voting habits and which social groups were likely to vote for which candidates and which parties [72]. Henry Pelling produced what he called a ‘social geography’ of elections after the passage of the Third Reform Act [87]. History thus fruitfully linked with both the quantitative and the qualitative techniques of the social sciences to develop analyses of parliamentary reform. One famously controversial study on the impact of 1832 (see Chapter 4) acknowledged its ‘sociological premises’ [54].

These political studies, related closely to social and occupational structures, link directly to two other important trends which have been developed during the last 40 years. ‘History from below’ flourished particularly in the 1960s and 1970s when many scholars became increasingly concerned with the importance of social structures. The quest to discover the origins both of the English ‘working class’ and, historiographically a little later, the British ‘middle class’ necessitated social analysis. The more perceptive of the historians of class recognised that growing political awareness was an integral part of the process. Class consciousness, after all, related to the exercise of power and the quest for power needed existing political structures to be changed [43; 55]. Thus, discussion of parliamentary reform became intertwined with debates about class and about the significance of a changing ‘political culture’ in nineteenth-century Britain.

HISTORIANS AND THE LINGUISTIC TURN

The other important intellectual development was the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This began to influence history-writing (not always for the better and, stylistically, very much for the worse) in the 1980s. Detailed study by historians of language as a transmitter of ideas, not necessarily yoked to social, economic or cultural assumptions about their significance, was inspired by radical new ideas in literary criticism conventionally described as ‘post-structuralism’. The relevance, and even the validity, of this approach for historians steeped in an empirical tradition has excited much debate, both anguished and spiteful. Many have been reluctant to accept that language constructs its own reality, rather than being invented to meet economic, social or cultural needs. Certainly, extreme versions of post-structuralism, which argue that a text has no validity outside itself, undermine all forms of historical enquiry since they deny any notion of relative importance and suggest that change cannot be explained by prioritising (in other words self-consciously ‘privileging’ particular pieces of historical evidence). Even the links and connections which historians rely upon to test their hypotheses are considered invalid by many structuralists.

It is tempting to sweep post-structuralism aside as portentous, yet vacuous, intellectual baggage which has nothing of value for the historian and which will soon collapse under the weight of its own self-referential pretensions. Tempting, especially given the extraordinarily ugly and obscurantist language in which much post-structuralist writing is couched, but unwise. At the very least, the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ has caused historians to be more rigorous in testing their assumptions. Language can, indeed, be used to help shape ideas. Perhaps a fashion itself, it has nevertheless helped to debunk some earlier ones. A study of the language used by those democratic parliamentary reformers called Chartists, for example, conveys the obvious but still significant message that they wanted political change [60; 63], Thus, the explanation for their movement is not to be reduced to a simple matter of hunger or economic privation. Nor is it inevitable that it was primarily a class-based movement.

Similarly, Dror Wahrman has stimulatingly and provocatively wrestled with that ubiquitous phrase ‘the middle class’. He argues that it is more valid to see the term as a deliberate ‘construct’ rather than the result of inevitable social and economic development. Any reader still caught in that time warp within which generalisations like ‘The 1832 Reform Act gave power to the middle classes’ have currency will be shaken by observations such as ‘it was not so much the rising “middle class” that was the crucial factor in bringing about the Reform Bill of 1832; rather, it was the Reform Bill of 1832 that was the crucial factor in cementing the invention of the ever-rising “middle class”’ [45 p. 18). In his view, the ‘middle class’ was given a greater prominence by an aristocracy with power to preserve. It was less a reality than a politically convenient construct.

Thus have so many easy, progressive generalisations about reform been pulled apart or, in the jargon of the age, ‘deconstructed’. Can Humpty Dumpty be put together again? It is the contention of this book that it can. Certainly, it is necessary to divest ourselves of some long-established, but unhelpful, generalisations. ‘Progress’ in political change is neither simple nor linear. The history of parliamentary reform is not the same thing as the history of democratisation. ‘Democratisation’ is anyway a highly problematic and contested concept. Non-voters are not necessarily politically excluded. No reform Act ‘gives power’ to any social group – at least not in any direct sense. Women were no more politically ‘empowered’ by the Reform Acts of 1918 and 1928 than were the middle ranks of society by that of 1832 [110]. It is more persuasive, if still not wholly convincing, to claim that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reform Acts did more to confirm an established political order than to change one.

Historians have become more concerned with continuities. They play down the extent to which parliamentary reform changed the essentials. They may also be much more sceptical than they were about explanations which link changes in the franchise to changes in society contingent upon industrialisation. Much historical writing of the 1980s and 1990s has warned against ‘economic reductionism’ and indeed, any other form of reductionism [37]. This ungainly neologism merely states the obvious: complex phenomena are not to be explained by exclusive concentration on individual, or simpler, elements. However, historians’ determination to try to see things ‘in the round’ has helped to clarify a number of issues relating to parliamentary reform. They are now more keenly aware that neither ‘top-down’ explanations, grounded in high politics at Westminster, nor ‘bottom-up’ ones, which concentrate on forms of extra-parliamentary pressure, are sufficient in themselves. The emphasis has shifted towards the need to understand that complex interplay of factors which created the active political culture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Changing methodological and interpretative fashions, therefore, have confirmed the central place of parliamentary reform within this culture. The subject needs robust and cogent explanation within this new framework.

2 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AGITATION BEFORE 1832

ORIGINS TO 1789

Pressure to change both the composition of the House of Commons and the qualifications to vote long predates the first major parliamentary reform Act passed in 1832. The history of earlier reform movements will be followed in broad outline here; a number of useful studies exist to take the student deeper [7; 21; 27; 28; 29; 30; 49]. It was easy to criticise the unreformed political system. The number and distribution of parliamentary constituencies reflected medieval circumstances. By the later eighteenth century, they bore no relation to intrinsic economic and political importance. Cornwall sent 44 members to Parliament, one fewer than the whole of Scotland, which had been linked by political union to England in 1707. Rapidly industrialising Lancashire sent only 13. Although the great majority of English voters were to be found in county constituencies, the counties represented only 80 of England’s 489 parliamentary seats. Each English county sent two MPs to parliament regardless of size or population.

Even greater anomalies existed over rights to vote in parliamentary elections. Every male owner of land worth at least 40 shillings (£2) a year in rental value could vote in a county constituency, though the exercise of voting rights could be a time-consuming and costly business because voting normally took place in the county towns. In the boroughs, however, voting rights varied widely from constituency to constituency. In a few well-populated places, such as Preston, Northampton, Coventry and Westminster, a majority of adult males could vote. Some constituencies before 1832, indeed, were close to being male democracies. Most, however, had very restricted voting rights. Students of parliamentary history are well aware of the names of the tiniest parliamentary boroughs, such as Old Sarum (outside Salisbury), Dunwich (on the Suffolk coast and already beginning to fall into the North Sea) or East and West Looe (Cornwall) where voters might be in single figures. In far more, voters did not top two hundred. Many of these constituencies were in the control either of the Crown (through what was called ‘court influence’) or of an aristocratic patron (or ‘borough monger’ as he was often called). Most of Scotland’s parliamentary seats at the end of the eighteenth century were controlled in the interest of the Crown and government by Henry Dundas, a senior minister of William Pitt the Younger.

In the smaller boroughs, actual elections were a rarity. Twenty-nine general elections were held in the years 1701–1831. The boroughs of Newton-le-Willows (Lancashire), Bere Alston (Devon) and West Looe (Cornwall) appear to have had no electoral contests whatever in this period [49]. Other boroughs held no more than two or three. In general, it was the larger boroughs, such as Liverpool, Maidstone, Lincoln and the City of London which saw the most frequent elections in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Such a haphazard system had many critics, as we shall shortly see. It is important not to jump to the over-simple conclusion, however, that the combination of a highly restricted electorate and infrequent elections ensured a moribund political system. As Frank O’Gorman’s work has demonstrated, non-voters were frequently politically aware and capable of formulating views and even policies which the political elite ignored at its peril [39; 122]. What was called ‘maintaining the interest’ in a constituency frequently involved engaging in lively debate with inhabitants. O’Gorman concludes that, although most constituencies were indeed controlled by great landowners or the crown, this control ‘was exercised at great cost, with great care, with great difficulty, with much effort, and sometimes for no very great return’ [39 p. 384]. The absence of an electoral contest was no guarantee of lack of political involvement. Agreements or accommodations between different interests were brokered between elections, or sometimes just before nominations closed: ‘… the results of elections were determined not so much by the electors as by the patron or patrons involving themselves in a complex and long-term dialogue with the community’ [39 p. 386].

The revisionist picture which emerges, therefore, is of a vigorous and, at least to some extent, an inclusive political culture. Eighteenth-century politics during the so-called ‘Whig Oligarchy’ was not to be explained solely, or even primarily, by crude bribery and treating, with the aim of avoiding elections and ensuring that apathy, inertia and stasis ruled. Far too much attention had been paid by the school of historians inspired by Sir Lewis Namier to study the voting structure of constituencies without delving more deeply into the political and social interactions which were an essential element in political debate and control [38].

Although the unreformed system of politics was a good deal more flexible, responsive and, to a degree, representative than used to be thought, it was certainly not invulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, a sense of perspective is necessary. The structure of parliament was only one of a number of reformist targets in the eighteenth century and, at least until the 1790s, by no means the most important. Religious nonconformists and their supporters, for example, were much more concerned to be rid of discriminatory legislation against them, dating from the reign of Charles II. In the years 1787–89, particularly, it seemed for a time that the so-called Test and Corporations Acts would fall to a concerted campaign from dissenters and their allies in the Whig opposition to the government of the Younger Pitt. At much the same time, evangelical reformers were beginning to build up a head of steam against what they saw as the inhumanity and immorality of the slave trade. Earlier in the reign of George III (1760–1820), the campaigns of the populist politician John Wilkes highlighted the potential for conflict between the interests of government and those of elected MPs. Whether the clearly expressed will of the electorate could be overturned by parliament, which deemed Wilkes an ineligible MP despite successive re-elections for the county of Middlesex in 1768–69, became a major issue to stir popular opinion particularly in London [41]. The heightened tensions generated by...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• An Introduction to the Series
• Note on Referencing System
• Part One: Origins
• Part Two: The ‘Great' Reform Act of 1832
• Part Three: Redefining the ‘Privileged Pale of the Constitution'
• Part Four: Votes for Women – And Many More Men
• Part Five: Conclusion and Assessment
• Part Six: Documents
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index