"The Greatest Revolution", the Third Reform Act 1884 | Parliamentary Archives

the 1884 third reform act which added some two million voters to the lectures and the 1885 redistribution of seats Act which made for more equal constituencies with the main domestic achievements of Gladstone second ministry it was not the grand old man himself though who was the driving force behind them but instead Joseph Chamberlain Chamberlain was one of the leading lights of the radical wing of the Liberal Party he and his fellow radicals were appalled to the 1867 Reform Act had left agricultural laborers without the boats leaving the counties still dominated by wealthy landowners and farmers they were also frustrated that the distribution of seats meant that many small towns still had the same number of MPs as the large industrial cities they tended to represents the first operation was addressed with the reform bill introduced to the Commons on the 28th of February 1884 this proposed to introduce a uniform franchise across the whole of Britain and Ireland every man who paid an annual rents of ten pounds or held property of the same rateable value would have the votes regardless of whether they lived in the town or country as William Gladstone told the Commons the bill I am proposing to introduce is substantially though not technically confined to one main view one great provision to give unity and completeness to the household and occupation franchises throughout the United Kingdom it is in point of facts a household franchise bill for the United Kingdom the bill comfortably passed the Commons in June 1884 here though it ran into difficulties in the conservative dominated House of Lords leading Chamberlain to deliver a series of speech with the rallying cry of peers versus the people seeking to defuse the crisis Gladstone and the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury met to work out a compromise the Reform Act would be allowed to pass and the redistribution bill to swiftly follow would take one MP from seats with less than 50,000 inhabitants and both from those with less than 15,000 the 142 seats released were then redistributed among the more densely populated areas this document shows the resulting changes to the seats and electoral districts as you can see it lists each of the counties and boroughs with their population denoting any divisions to be made and how many members of parliament will now be returned the old counties for example were split into smaller single-member constituencies some of the largest cities were also divided such as Birmingham Glasgow and Leeds for instance as you can see here Liverpool which had a population of just over 600,000 was split into nine smaller divisions each with their own MP Chamberlain declared the reform acts the greatest revolution that this country has ever undergone but we have to remember that over a third of men and all women were still excluded from the franchise [Music] you