Representation of the People Act: parliamentary elections
The Representation of the People Act 1918 set a minimum voting age of 30 for women in parliamentary elections, with qualifications attached. Women could qualify as registered occupiers of a dwelling-house, or of land or premises with a rateable value greater than five pounds. Marriage to a registered property occupier also provided a route to eligibility, as did being a graduate voting in a university constituency. Women also had to be free of legal incapacity. The act received royal assent on 6 February 1918 and came into effect at that year's general election, extending voting rights across Great Britain and Ireland.
For men, the reform followed a system that still excluded a substantial share of the population. After the Third Reform Act in 1884, 60% of male householders over 21 could vote, leaving 40% without that right, including the poorest. Millions of soldiers returning from World War I would still have been ineligible for the long-delayed general election under those arrangements. The previous election had taken place in December 1910. Home Secretary George Cave introduced the bill for the governing coalition, arguing that wartime experience had brought social classes nearer together and made the old class divisions behind electoral exclusion harder to sustain.
The campaign for women's suffrage had gathered momentum during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1865, the Kensington Society met at Charlotte Manning's home in Kensington. Its members were middle-class women barred from higher education, and a discussion of suffrage led to a small committee to draft a petition and gather signatures. Barbara Bodichon, Emily Davies, and Elizabeth Garrett were among the women leading that work. John Stuart Mill agreed to present a petition to Parliament if it attracted at least 100 signatures; his stepdaughter Helen Taylor drafted the first version. In 1869, Mill published The Subjection of Women, arguing for equality and examining education, marriage, and social expectations.
Millicent Fawcett saw women's voting rights as the main reason for the Speaker's Conference in 1917, but the resulting age limit frustrated her. The country had one and a half million more women than men at the time, following the loss of life in the First World War. Many supporters of suffrage at the conference still wanted to preserve a male majority among voters. Fawcett accepted that a proposal without that restriction would struggle to win broad support across parties. Her response linked the compromise to parliamentary politics: recalling Disraeli, she contrasted government by logic with government by Parliament.
Men gained the vote from 21 in the constituency where they lived, with practically all their property qualifications abolished. Military service brought a further exception: men who had turned 19 while serving in connection with World War I could vote while still under 21. Confusion remained about whether eligibility continued after discharge, and the Representation of the People Act 1920 clarified that it did, after the 1918 general election. Alongside the changes to parliamentary elections, the local government franchise expanded to women over 30 on the same terms as men. Residence in a specific constituency became the basis of voting rights, and the act institutionalized first-past-the-post elections.
The bill reforming parliamentary elections entered Parliament in May 1917, progressing through further stages during that year and into 1918. Active military service meant attendance in both Houses was much lower than expected. Proportional representation became contentious after the Speaker's Conference recommended it, with the Houses differing over methods. The final votes came on the parliamentary session's last day. The act arranged for a royal commission to consider proportional representation for constituencies in Great Britain returning three or more members, covering one hundred Commons members. The commission followed two months after enactment, and the Commons rejected its proposal. The final Commons vote on 6 February 1918 passed by 224 Ayes to 114 Noes.
Plural voting was another reform with an unfinished history. Between 1906 and 1914, the Liberal Party had sought to prevent people listed on electoral registers more than once from casting multiple votes. Parliament shelved that bill when the First World War began. The new law reduced plural voting only partially. Section 8 limited a man's additional vote based on qualifications other than residence to one constituency; for women, the corresponding restriction concerned qualifications other than local government eligibility. The resulting ceiling was two votes per person at a general election to the House of Commons, rather than a complete end to multiple voting.
The arrangements for parliamentary elections changed beyond voter eligibility. Some seats moved to industrial towns, while Ireland's seats were amended separately through the Redistribution of Seats (Ireland) Act 1918. Polls now had to take place on a specified date, replacing voting spread across several days in different constituencies. The Treasury took responsibility for returning officers' costs, which candidates had previously paid in addition to their own expenses. For women, electoral equality arrived with the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. It removed property qualifications and extended voting rights to all women over 21, bringing another five million women into the electorate.