Was Britain A Democracy Between 1832 Essay

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Was Britain a democracy between 1832 - 1867?

With class structures being an important part of British society and parliament being in the hands of the wealthy upper class, we have to ask ourselves was Britain a democracy between 1832 - 1869? By looking at politic procedure during this time period, we will be able to see how democratic Britain was.

In 1832, Parliament pass a legalisation changing the way the British electoral system worked, known as the Reform Act. For many years, people had criticised the electoral system as unfair and said the system did not work. One of the many problems with this system was large industrial city's would have no MPs to represent them. The Act increased the number of individuals entitled to vote, increasing the size of the electorate and re-apportioned representation in Parliament.

Despite the increased representation in Parliament from the Reform Act, Britain was still unequally represented. City's where the population was mostly the working class lived were massively under-represented and towns where the population was mostly wealthy upper classed lived were massively over-represented. City's like Manchester only had two MPs to represent them and town like Cornwall had 40 Mps to represent them. This meant in that in Parliament the working class had little to no representation.

Political power was unequal proportioned in Britain. Wealthy landowners were the only one eligible to became MPs and the only ones who could vote. Six out of seven men and all women could not vote. this meant MPs would only serve their own agenda.

During 1832 - 1867 Britain had an open voting system. This meant everyone know who you were voting for. This lead to tenants voting for there landowners out of fear of reprisal. Landowners would often using

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