Introduction

To try to understand the politics of a country, it helps to understand a little of its political history, and this is particularly so with electoral history. Therefore we begin this chapter by going back almost 100 years and show maps of the last 25 general elections: that is, all those held since the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave the vote to women in the UK if they were both aged over 30 and occupied premises which had a yearly rateable value of not less than £5 (a large amount back then). It was not until 1928 that the voting age for women was lowered to 21, the same as it was at that time for men. The maps this chapter begins with thus stretch from the end of one period recognised then for being the result of an accumulation of a particular set of corruptions, when Parliament eventually succumbed to the will of the suffragettes, and ends with what could be the end of another such period of rising dissent about the political system, with increasingly loud calls for change and reform.

The voting system prior to 1918 was generally known for how rotten it was. The Reform Act of 1832 had removed 57 rotten boroughs: tiny parliamentary constituencies where a single person could easily buy the vote of a majority of electors. Pocket or proprietary boroughs, larger constituencies but also in effect owned by a single major landlord, were outlawed in the Reform Act of 1867. They had remained for so long because ‘Rotten boroughs were defended by the successive Tory governments of 1807–1830 – a substantial number of Tory constituencies lay in rotten and pocket boroughs’.1 The Tories (who have now become the Conservative Party) did not have a monopoly on being undemocratic. The Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George pioneered the selling of honours for votes, leading to new laws being enacted. The Representation of the People Act 1949 abolished university constituencies and additional votes which had been granted to the owners of business premises, and the similarly titled Act of 1969 brought the voting age of men and women down to 18. The Representation Acts of 1985 and 1989 extended these rights to citizens living overseas, as the Tories (who were again in power then) thought they would benefit from this.