The Victorian Era

How Did the Reform Acts Change Britain?

Article · History & Overview · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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The Reform Acts are the three great parliamentary statutes of 1832, 1867, and 1884 that progressively extended the franchise in the United Kingdom and transformed the British political system. The first act, passed just before the Victorian era began, established the framework of the new system. The second act, passed in the middle of the period, gave the vote to most urban working men. The second act raised the United Kingdom electorate from about 1.1 million to about 2.5 million. The third act, passed near the end of the period, gave the vote to most rural working men and lifted the electorate to about 5.7 million. Together, the three acts converted the United Kingdom from a narrow oligarchy into a near-universal male suffrage democracy, and they shaped the political culture of the modern world.

The Reform Acts were the most important political events of the Victorian era. Their history is examined in detail in Victorian Political History, and the broader context is set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview. The role of the mass movement that pushed for these reforms is examined in the page on the Chartist movement.

The Reform Act of 1832

The Reform Act of 1832 was the first of the three great reform statutes, and it was passed in the political crisis that preceded the Victorian era. The act was the result of a long campaign by the middle class, by the new industrialists, and by the radical movements of the early nineteenth century. The Whig government of Earl Grey, supported by the new industrial middle class, drafted the bill. The House of Lords, dominated by the landed aristocracy, rejected the first version of the bill, and the political crisis that followed led to riots in many British cities, the resignation of the government, and the eventual passage of a revised version of the bill.

The Reform Act of 1832 abolished 56 rotten boroughs, each of which had previously elected two members of Parliament, and it redistributed the seats to the new industrial towns of the north and the Midlands. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield were among the new constituencies created by the act. The act extended the franchise to a wider section of the middle class, and it established a uniform property qualification for voters in the boroughs and the counties. The act increased the electorate of the United Kingdom from about 366,000 to about 650,000, and it changed the political balance of the country by transferring political power from the south and the south-west to the north and the Midlands.

The Reform Act of 1832 did not, however, enfranchise the working class. The property qualifications it set were high enough to exclude most working men, and the new industrial towns, although they had gained parliamentary seats, were not given the right to vote for them. The act was, in this sense, a middle-class reform, and the disappointment of the working class with the act was one of the principal causes of the Chartist movement.

The Reform Act of 1867

The second Reform Act was passed in 1867 by the Conservative government of the Earl of Derby, with Benjamin Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer and the principal architect of the measure. The political context was unusual. The Conservatives had been out of office for most of the previous twenty years, and they hoped that extending the franchise would create a new class of voters who would be sympathetic to the Conservative Party. The Liberals, who had been the principal party of reform, were divided over the issue, and some of them felt that the extension of the franchise would benefit the Conservatives. Disraeli described the act as a “leap in the dark”, a phrase that has stuck.

The Reform Act of 1867 enfranchised most urban working men. The act abolished the distinction between borough and county franchises in many places, and it lowered the property qualification for voting in the boroughs. The electorate of the United Kingdom increased from about 1.1 million to about 2.5 million, and the proportion of adult males with the vote rose from about one in five to about one in three. The act was a landmark in the history of British democracy, because it gave the vote to the urban working class for the first time.

The political consequences of the act were surprising. The Conservatives, who had expected to benefit from the new franchise, lost the general election of 1868 to the Liberals, and Disraeli was out of office for most of the next six years. The Liberal Party, under William Gladstone, was the principal beneficiary of the new voters, and the period from 1868 to 1886 is often called the heyday of British Liberalism.

The Reform Act of 1884

The third Reform Act was passed in 1884 by the Liberal government of William Gladstone. The political context was the long campaign of the rural radicals, the trade unions, and the women’s suffrage movement for the extension of the franchise to the rural working class. The Conservatives, who had hoped that the rural vote would favour them, were forced to support the act, although they extracted a price in the form of the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, which equalised the size of parliamentary constituencies and weakened the power of the small boroughs.

The Reform Act of 1884 extended the franchise to most rural working men. The act abolished the distinction between the borough and the county franchises, and it lowered the property qualification for voting in the counties to the level of the boroughs. The electorate of the United Kingdom increased from about 3 million to about 5.7 million, and the proportion of adult males with the vote rose to about two-thirds. The act completed the work of 1867, and it gave the United Kingdom a near-universal male suffrage for the first time.

The Redistribution of Seats

The Reform Acts were accompanied by separate Redistribution of Seats Acts, which equalised the size of parliamentary constituencies. The Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 was the most important of these, and it established the principle of equal-sized constituencies that became the basis of the modern electoral system. The act abolished many small boroughs, created new boroughs in the growing industrial cities, and ensured that each member of Parliament represented approximately the same number of voters.

Local Government Reform

The reform of national government was accompanied by a parallel reform of local government. The Local Government Act of 1888 created elected county councils in England and Wales, taking the administration of roads, bridges, and asylums away from the unelected justices of the peace. The Local Government Act of 1894, the work of the Liberal politician Lord Salisbury’s successor as Conservative leader, created elected urban and rural district councils and parish meetings, and it established the system of local government that survived largely unchanged until 1974. Together with the Reform Acts, these statutes created the modern British state.

Other Reforms of the Franchise

The Reform Acts were the central statutes, but they were accompanied by a series of other reforms that completed the democratisation of the franchise. The Secret Ballot Act of 1872 introduced the private ballot, replacing the open voting that had allowed employers to intimidate their workers. The Corrupt Practices Acts of 1854 and 1883 curbed the open bribery that had once decided most county elections. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 gave the vote to most adult women, and the Equal Franchise Act of 1928 extended the vote to all adult women on equal terms with men.

The Significance of the Reform Acts

The Reform Acts transformed British politics in several ways. They extended the franchise from a small propertied minority to the great majority of adult men. They shifted the political balance of the country from the south and the countryside to the north and the cities. They created the mass electorate that would shape the politics of the twentieth century, and they laid the foundations of the modern party system. The acts were not, however, complete. They did not give the vote to women, and they did not address the question of the role of the House of Lords. The question of women’s suffrage, in particular, was one of the most important political questions of the late Victorian period, and it is examined in Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life.