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History A Level - Political Reform > Breadth Study Topic 1 > Flashcards

Breadth Study Topic 1 Flashcards

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1
Q

How did the 1832 Great Reform Act extend the franchise?

A
  • Boroughs required men to own or occupy a residence of £10

* Counties required property £2 or renting land worth £50

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2
Q

How did the 1832 Great Reform Act change representation (borough and counties)?

A
  • 56 rotten boroughs removed
  • 145 borough seats abolished
  • 64 county seats created
  • 22 new two member boroughs
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3
Q

What pressure from above lead to the 1832 Reform Act?

A
  • 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
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4
Q

What pressure from below lead to the 1832 Reform Act?

A
  • 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
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5
Q

What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on the franchise?

A
  • 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
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6
Q

What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on the make up of parliament?

A
  • 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
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7
Q

What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on equal constituency representation?

A
  • 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
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8
Q

What were the impacts of the 1832 Reform Act on political parties?

A
  • Saw an increase in contested elections (30% pre 1832, 50% afterwards)
  • People began to identify as either Whig or Tory
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9
Q

What did the 1858 Property Qualification for MPs Act do?

A

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

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10
Q

Evidence of pressure from above for the Property Qualifications for MPs Act

A
  • Edward Glover and MP sentenced to 4 years for failing to meet property qulification
  • Both judge, jury and press sympathetic to Glover
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11
Q

What was the significance of the Property Qualification for MPs Act?

A
  • 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
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12
Q

How did the 1867 Reform Act extend the franchise

A

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

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13
Q

How did the 1867 Reform Act change representation (borough and counties)?

A
  • 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
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14
Q

Evidence of pressure from above for the Second Reform Acts

A
  • 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
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15
Q

Evidence of pressure from below for the Second Reform Acts

A
  • 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
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16
Q

What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on the franchise?

A
  • 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
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17
Q

What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on the make up of parliament?

A
  • 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
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18
Q

What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on equal constituency representation?

A

• Overrepresentation still occurred with the South West having 45 MPs to North East with population 3x larger only having 32 MPs

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19
Q

What were the impacts of the 1867 Reform Act on political parties?

A
  • Party organisation developed further
  • National union of Conservatives Association and National Liberal Federation were created
  • Further emphasis on ensuring people were registered to vote
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20
Q

When was the Secret Ballot Act passed?

A

1872

21
Q

What did the Secret Ballot Act do?

A

It introduced the one day vote with the ballot being secret

22
Q

What pressure from above was there to pass the Secret Ballot Act?

A
  • Radicals felt it would increase voter freedom
  • John Bright (radical MP) had campaigned for it since 1840 and Act can be seen as reward for serving in Gladstone’s cabinet
  • Liberals were committed to electoral reform - had been part on 1832 reform
  • Gladstone felt the need to include ideas from radicals to keep coalition together
23
Q

What pressure from below was there to pass the Secret Ballot Act?

A
  • The 1868 election was known for widespread violence, corruption and intimidation
  • However no evidence to show this helped secure SBA
24
Q

What was the short term effect of the Secret Ballot Act?

A
  • People could still be bribed
  • Some areas ignored the act in favour of landlord power
  • In urban areas employer influence over voter did not decrease
25
Q

What were the long term effects of the Secret Ballot Act?

A
  • Enabled a more representative system
  • Improvement in efficiency to the system
  • Allowed political groups to oppose powerful figures in some areas (e.g. Irish Home Rulers)
26
Q

What reform was passed in 1883?

A

The Corrupt Practices Act

27
Q

What dd the Corrupt Practices Act do?

A
  • Set a limit on expenditure in elections
  • Prohibited bribery and treating
  • Required expenditure to be accounted for and introduced penalties (fines, imprisonment and expulsion from HoC)
28
Q

Why was the Corrupt Practices Act passed?

A

The Secret Ballot Act failed to end bribery

29
Q

What were the effects of the Corrupt Practices Act?

A
  • Spending at elections reduced with the spend for each vote fell from 18s 8d in 1880 to 3s 4d in 1910
  • Use of volunteers for political parties became essential
  • Cost of elections still remained high for those involved - election agents had to be paid
  • 20% of seats were still uncontested
30
Q

What did the Third Reform Act in 1884 do?

A

Household suffrage and lodger franchise was extended to the counties

31
Q

What pressure from above was there to pass the 1884 Reform Act?

A
  • Gladstone wanted to restore his decreasing popularity
  • Hartington (Whig) prioritised as Redistribution act over a franchise extension
  • Chamberlin (Radical) - needed radical measure to restore his image and hoped electoral reform would lead to more radical voters
  • Salisbury (conservative Leader) - realised franchise extension would be bad for Con. so would approved in order to propose redistribution act
32
Q

What pressure from below was there to pass the 1884 Reform Act?

A

There was none

33
Q

What did the 1884 Reform Act do for the franchise?

A
  • 2/3 of adult males could vote
  • 5.7 million could vote
  • Now included agricultural labourer and miners who lived in counties
  • Complexity of the registering system meant that many working class men ended up disenfranchised
  • Plural voting still carried on - 50,000 in 1911
  • Those on poor relief, living in employers residence or had no permanent residence were still disenfranchised
34
Q

What did the 1884 Reform Act do to the make up of Parliament?

A
  • The redistribution of rural seats means that the influence of the landed decreased drastically
  • In 1885, the HoC had more MPs with commercial/industrial interests than landowner interests for the first time
35
Q

What were the impacts of the 1885 Reform Act on equal constituency representation?

A
  • Boroughs with population less than 15,000 lost their MP and those with less than 50,000 lost 1 MP
  • 150 seats redistributed to more densely populated areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire and growing cities
  • Nearly all constituencies were single member and similar in population size
36
Q

What pressure from above was there for the Redistribution Act?

A

Salisbury agreed to the 1884 act in order to get this bill passed which created suburban constituencies that benefited the Conservatives

37
Q

What pressure from below was there for the Redistribution Act?

A

There was none

38
Q

What was passed in 1911?

A

The Parliaments Act

39
Q

What did the Parliaments Act do?

A
  • Prevented the HoL rejection or amending money bills
  • Other legislation could only be delayed up to 2 years
  • Max term of parliament rescued from 7 years to 5
40
Q

What other parliamentary reform was introduced in 1911?

A

The payment of MPs

41
Q

What pressure from above was there for the Parliaments Act to be passed?

A
  • Lloyd George used the 1909 budget to push through reform the lords had prevails blocked
  • The 1909 election was called as the Peers refused to pass the budget
  • Asquith persuaded the king to agree to appoint 500 liberal peers if the peers continued to block bills
42
Q

What pressure from below was there for the Parliaments Act to be passed?

A
  • As the HoC became more democratic the HoL became viewed as an anachronism
  • There was no popular unrest in regards to the issue
43
Q

What were the effects of the Parliaments Act and Payment of MPs?

A
  • Allowed the HoC to overcall the lords on some issues
  • Lords power substantially reduced to only blocking bills for 2 years
  • PM would never again be from the HoL
  • For the first time the Conservatives had a middle class leader (Bonar-Law)
  • Working men could enter parliament MPs
  • Salaries for MPs attracted poorer candidates to parliament
44
Q

What did the Representation of the People Act of 1918 do?

A
  • Women over the age of 30 could vote if they or their husband owned homes or rented property over £5 per annum
  • Men over the age of 21 could vote if they had been a resident for 6 months
  • Establishes a population of 70,000 as a key for one member constituencies
  • Returning officers paid from public funds
45
Q

What pressure from above was there for the Representation of the People Act?

A
  • Lloyd Geroge as PM was supportive of votes as were new MPS
  • Asquith was gradually more supportive if women suffrage after the end of the Suffragette movement
46
Q

What were the impacts of the Representation of the People Act on the franchise?

A

• Almost everyones had the vote (only women under 21 and 20% of 30 year old women and the complexity of registration lead to around 7% of men not voting)
• The number of voters was raised from 7.7 million to 21.4 million - most significant extension
• Plural voting remained for 30,000 people has 2 votes
(to get the Cons. to support the act)

47
Q

What were the impacts of the Representation of the People Act on the make up of parliament

A
  • Lead to separate act allowing women over 30 to become MPs
  • Public funding of returning officers meant that election were less expensive
  • Significant boost for Labour Party - enfranchisement lead to working class male vote, in 1918 won 60 seats (45/60 had left school at age 13). Labour got first government in 1924
  • Redistribution of seats helped conservatives with more suburban middle class seats (roughly from 48 to 200)
48
Q

How was everyone over the age of 21 given the vote?

A

Under the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 which saw women over 21 get the vote

History A Level - Political Reform (7 decks)

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