Breadth Study Topic 1 Flashcards
How did the 1832 Great Reform Act extend the franchise?
- Boroughs required men to own or occupy a residence of £10
* Counties required property £2 or renting land worth £50
How did the 1832 Great Reform Act change representation (borough and counties)?
- 56 rotten boroughs removed
- 145 borough seats abolished
- 64 county seats created
- 22 new two member boroughs
What pressure from above lead to the 1832 Reform Act?
- Collapse of the Tories over Roman Catholic emancipation
- Actions of Earl Grey 1831/32 - presented 2 reform bills to Parliament but they were voted down by the Lords
- Whigs and Political expediency (practicality) - Whigs saw county seats and rotten boroughs as benefitting Tories so wanted to remove them
What pressure from below lead to the 1832 Reform Act?
- Swing movement 1830 - rising rural discontent to poverty & use of threshing machines
- Widespread riots - after Lords rejected 2nd bill in October 1831 there were riots in Nottingham, Derby and Bristol
- Political unions - 100,000 attended the Birmingham Political Union
- Days of May 1832
What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on the franchise?
- 1 in 5 adult males could now vote
- Did not lead to the working class vote but allowed shop keeper, middle class and some skilled craftsmen the vote and detached them from wanting reform for the working classes
- Bribery/corruption was still common with new voters influenced by landed who supplied their work/wages
What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on the make up of parliament?
- Aristocratic government remained
- All PMs apart from Peel came from the HoL for next 30 years
- Property qualification of £600 (county) and £300 (borough) meant that landed and their interests dominated parliament
- 75% of MPs were land owners in 1832
What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on equal constituency representation?
- Equal electoral districts were non existent - Totnes had a population of 179 had the same number of MPs that had 8500 people
- London and other cities were widely under represented
What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on political parties?
- Saw an increase in contested elections (30% pre 1832, 50% afterwards)
- People began to identify as either Whig or Tory
What did the 1858 Property Qualification for MPs Act do?
It removed the property qualification requirement for MPs as people realised it has been abused and that people faked ownership of property to get into parliament
Evidence of pressure from above for the Property Qualifications for MPs Act
- Edward Glover and MP sentenced to 4 years for failing to meet property qulification
- Both judge, jury and press sympathetic to Glover
What was the significance of the Property Qualification for MPs Act?
- It served no real purpose but abolished a system seen as a sham
- Glover was perceived to be made the scapegoat for over 1/2 of MPs who failed to meet the PQ
How did the 1867 Reform Act extend the franchise
Boroughs
• Any adult male who owned or occupied a house for 12 months
• Lodgers in property worth £10 or more for over 12 months
Counties
• Men owning or leasing land over £5
• Men occupying rateable land of worth £12
How did the 1867 Reform Act change representation (borough and counties)?
- 45 seats taken from boroughs with less than 10,000 peoples
- 7 seats taken from towns disenfranchised for corruption
- 25 seats given to counties
- Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester got third MPs
Evidence of pressure from above for the Second Reform Acts
- Liberals had believed they had stagnated on reform
- Liberals wanted to reform boroughs where their power was strongest
- Conservatives wanted to take credit for the next bit of reform that occurred in the way the Liberals had benefitted from the 1832 GRA
- Conservatives felt that the GRA had favoured boroughs where they were less powerful, but when they gain power but are in a minority of 70 MPs
- Political rivalry between Disraeli meant he gave himself only 14 days to write the bill and accepted a lot of liberal amendments (e.g. abolitions of compounding that created 500,000 votes) but none from Gladstone his rival
Evidence of pressure from below for the Second Reform Acts
- Very little compared to that of 1832
- Population was 5 million higher but representation to industrial areas hadn’t occurred
- Workers in the north began to support sentiment of revolutionaries in the US
- Movements such as the reform league(supported universal manhood suffrage) began to get wide following amongst trade unionist and working class
- Reform League demonstration in Hyde Park in 1866 ended in violence
- Economy began to dramatically decline in 1866 leading to collapse of banks and then companies, crops failed, meat prices shot up, cotton famine in the North
What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on the franchise?
- 1 in 3 men could vote
- Those without 1 years residence, living with parents, lodger paying rent less that £10 and those on poor relief still couldn’t vote
- Borough electoate grew 134% (Birmingham grew from 8k to 43k voters)
- County electorate grew 46% - labourer still excluded from voting
What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on the make up of parliament?
- Less than 1/4 came from industrial or commercial backgrounds in 1874
- More contested seats
- Party discipline on MPs began to grow and MPs worked more cohesively
What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on equal constituency representation?
• Overrepresentation still occurred with the South West having 45 MPs to North East with population 3x larger only having 32 MPs
What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on political parties?
- Party organisation developed further
- National union of Conservatives Association and National Liberal Federation were created
- Further emphasis on ensuring people were registered to vote