Alex Hadfield

Year 1
Victorian Britain
Ben Roberts
20/01/15

To what extent can the 1832 Reform Act be seen as a

major turning point in modern British history?

The Representation of the People Act 1832, commonly known as The 1832 Reform Act is
considered by many historians, notably, E.J.Evans, to have been a major turning point in
British politics ...... the Reform Act deserves to be remembered as one of the most
momentous pieces of legislation in the history of modern Britain. 1 In order to fully
understand how important an event the Reform Act was, we must understand what the
parlamentary system was like in Britain prior to 1832.
In the years leading up to 1832, members of parliament were 'selected' to represent the
interests of local land owners rather than the majority of the people in their constituencies.
Under this system, only those who had money and power had any say in how the country
was governed, both in the House of Lords where most of them had seats, but also by
appointing friends to the House of Commons so as to ensure voting was in their best
interests.
The growth of industry in the 18th century brought great change to the country, its people
and their aspirations. Towns and cities increased in population as factories grew in number
and people were drawn to work in urban areas as agriculture declined. This led to further
inequalities in representation in Parliament. Urban areas such as Birmingham and
Manchester had no Members of Parliament while small villages which had once been
important in the middle ages sometimes sent two representatives to Parliament.
The two parliamentary parties of the time, the Whigs and the Tories, were both from the
same class although there were members of both parties who tried to steer votes in favour
of the working class. Men, such as, Sir Robert Peel Sr. who campaigned for better working
conditions for children, and William Wilberforce, who highlighted the fate of slaves.
'Rotten Boroughs', where there were too few voters to sustain the two elected members of
parliament, had become normal and this also allowed for incorrect representation. One
such borough, Old Sarum, .... had no longer a house standing, but the right to return its
two members remained to the farmers of the mounds of earth which marked where the
medieval houses had once stood.2
There were also inconsistencies in what qualifications were needed in order to vote. In
some constituencies, the new, growing middle class already had the vote, but not in
others.
Riots in London, Bristol and Bath as well as food riots in Ireland contributed to a growing
sense of unreast and need for parliamentary reform.
Following the revolution in France, even many Tory members of parliament called for
change as they feared the same would happen in Britain
Prior to 1832 then, corruption seemed to be the norm in the British voting system and it
was most certainly in favour of the upper classes. However, there had been calls for
reform in the voting system before 1832. In 1794, along with four others, Thomas Hardy
was arrested and charged with high treason. His 'crime' was his determination to discuss
and promote parliamentary reform.3
1 E.J. Evans, The Great Reform Act of 1832, (London, 1983)
2 G.R. Kesteven, Studies in English History The Triumph of Reform 1832, (London, 1967)
3 J.A. Philips, The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs English Electoral Behaviour 1818-1841, (Oxford, 1992)

The death of King George IV in 1830 dissolved Parliament by law, and a general election
was held. Electoral reform, which had been frequently discussed during the preceding
parliamentary session, became a major campaign issue. Across the country, several proreform 'political unions' were formed, made up of both middle and working class
individuals. The most influential of these was the Birmingham Political Union. These
groups confined themselves to lawful means of supporting reform, such as petitioning and
public oratory, and achieved a great level of public support.
The Tories won a majority in the election, but the party remained divided, and support for
Prime Minister Lord Wellington was weak.
Following the defeat of the Tories in parliament, Earl Grey, the new Whig Prime Minister
pledged parliamentary reform. His first two bills failed to be passed but in 1832, after
persuading The King to create more Whig peers in the House of Lords, the bill for reform
was passed due to the abstension from voting by Tory peers without the need for more
Whig peers.
Following the bill's passing, a great many changes were made. Around one hundred
obsolete seats in the House of Commons were redistributed to reflect changes in
population distribution. Many 'rotten boroughs' were abolished, and 'new' towns, such as
Manchester, were given proper representation for the first time. Voting requirements were
made consistent throughout the whole of Britain. Perhaps the biggest change made by the
Reform Act of 1832 was that it created a more general notion of the amount of property
needed in order to vote. Rather than requiring voters to own land outright, the Act stated
that renting land or a home was sufficient. This amount was also reduced to 10 and as a
result of this massive change, the amount of voters rose from 516,000 to 1.75 million,
approximately 14 percent of all adult men.
The requirement to own or rent property worth 10 annually, caused a further divide
between the middle class and the working class as the working class were still relatively
unrepresented in parliament. Also, although the majority were abolished, there were still a
few rotten boroughs and the Act did nothing to stop corruption in the voting system.
The Great Reform Act, however, did pave the way for further parliamentary reform and
acts of parliament were passed in 1835 and 1836 to increase the number of polling places
within each constituency and to reduce the polls to a single day. Corruption within the
voting system continued and in 1854, the government introduced the Corrupt Practices Act
in an attempt to end the practice of buying votes although this proved to be ineffectual.
The working classes, still feeling agitated over their under-representation, began to
demand further reforms and this gave rise to organisations such as the Chartist
Movement, which, amongst other things, demanded universal male suffrage, equal
representation in parliament and voting by secret ballot. They soon became popular
amongst the working class as a result of their demands. However, the Tories were still
against any further reforms and the Liberal Party, the successors to the Whigs, did not
seek any revisions to the electoral system until the 1850s.
Increased industrialisation, urbanisation and social change in the mid 1850s meant that
the system created by the 1832 reform act was under pressure. The working class
outnumbered the middle and upper classes but these classes were still the only ones
eligible to vote in parliamentary elections and form the government.
The industrial revolution changed where people lived, how they worked and

how they felt about their position in society and highlighted the undemocratic
nature of the British political system. It was a major contributor to urbanization,
the emergence of a class system and the decline in the power of the landed
aristocracy. After 1832 the population rose rapidly, especially in the industrial
towns. This meant that a redistribution of seats became necessary.
Urbanisation also led to the rapid spread of ideas and the emergence of a class
identity. The population of Britain had increased from 24m in 1831 to 29m by
1861. By 1865 the adult male population in England and Wales was over 5m of
which only about 1m had the vote leaving the vast majority of the working
class voteless. People continued to move to the industrial cities but there had
been no change in the constituencies and no new ones created. The
emergence of railways, as a result of the industrial revolution, led to the idea of
a national political identity, where people thought of national rather than local
issues, due to the rise of national newspapers. Politicians were quick to take
advantage of national papers to broadcast their point of view. The rise in cheap
printing presses together with basic education led to a literate, but
unsophisticated, working class readership who had their own popular papers
providing a class based message.
It was clear by this time that further parliamentary reform had to take place in
Britain, and in 1867 a second reform act was passed which brought Britain
further down the road to
democracy. The main changes that this second reform act brought in were that
all male urban householders and male lodgers paying 10 rent a year for unfurnished
accommodation got the right to vote. The act practically doubled the electorate. Another 52
seats were redistributed from small towns with a population of 10,000 or less, to the
growing industrial towns or counties. Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester saw
their representation increase from 2 MPs to 3 MPs. The University of London was also
given a seat. The counties of Cheshire, Kent, Norfolk, Somerset, Staffordshire and Surrey
were all given 6 MPs instead of 4.
A third reform act in 1884 raised the amount of eligible voters again to approximately five
and a half million by creating more voters in rural areas.
These reforms in the parliamentary electoral system took place over a period of 52 years,
at a time when Britain was becoming a major power in Europe as a result of the 'Industrial
Revolution'. They continued into the twentieth century, finally resulting in universal adult
suffrage. However, it is clear that the beginning in 1832, with the first Representation of the
People Act, was a major turning point in modern British History as it changed the country
fom a system where the ruling classes controlled everything to one of true democracy.
Without these first reforms, Britain may well have experienced a revolution on a par with
the one in France in 1789.

Bibliography
E.J.Evans, The Great Reform Act of 1832, (London, 1983)
G.R.Kesteven, Studies in English History - The Triumph of Reform 1832, (London, 1967)
J.A.Philips, The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs English Electoral Behaviour 18181841, (Oxford, 1992)
M.Roberts, Political Movements in Urban England 1832-1914, (Basingstoke, 2009)
S.L.Steinbach, Understanding the Victorians Politics, Culture and Society in NineteenthCentury Britain, (London, 2012)