Britain's Parliament granted almost every Chartist demand, just decades too late
In the early 1800s, Old Sarum, a borough with seven voters, sent two members to Westminster, and so did Dunwich, a town that had largely slipped into the sea. Working people petitioned for fair rules three times and were refused, yet Parliament eventually granted five of their six demands.
The Parliament that meets at the Palace of Westminster today dates from 1 January 1801, when union with Ireland merged two legislatures and brought in 100 Irish MPs and 32 lords. Its roots go further back, to the English Parliament of 1215 and the Scottish one of around 1235, joined as the Parliament of Great Britain in 1707. For much of its early life the unelected House of Lords outranked the Commons, and many small constituencies, the so-called rotten boroughs, were effectively owned by peers who installed friends and relatives.
Reform began with the act of 1832, and MPs who no longer owed their seats to aristocrats became bolder. Outside, the Chartists, largely working people campaigning peacefully, gathered millions of signatures for a charter presented in 1838, 1842 and 1848. They wanted votes for all men over twenty-one, secret ballots, no property test for candidates, pay for MPs, equal-sized constituencies and annual elections.
The answers came slowly and piecemeal. Property requirements for members went in 1858, the secret ballot came in 1872, and MPs were first paid in 1911, initially 400 pounds a year. Men over 21 and women over 30 got the vote in 1918, universal suffrage at 21 followed in 1928, and in 1969 Britain became the first major democracy to lower the voting age to 18. Only annual elections never happened.
The balance between the chambers shifted too. When the Lords rejected the 1909 People's Budget, H. H. Asquith threatened to have hundreds of new Liberal peers created, and the Lords narrowly accepted limits on their power. Today they can generally delay laws from the 650-member Commons, not block them.
Source: Parliament of the United Kingdom
