The Great Reform Act and the Modernization of British Politics: The Impact of Conservative Associations, 1835–1841
Year: 2008
Type: article
Abstract: Matthew CragoeW hen did nationally based party alignments become significant at the grassroots of British politics?The issue has divided historians.For some, the dramatic rise in contested elections following the Great Reform Act, and the unprecedented partisanship of the enlarged electorate, suggest a real modernization of British politics in the 1830s. 1 John Philips, for example, has argued that the measure "helped orient popular politics more consistently around national issues," and Frank O'Gorman and Philip Salmon have both pointed to the way in which the system of annual voter registration introduced in 1832 worked toward a similar end: not only did local parties develop new machinery to deal with registration, but their annual canvass of those eligible for the franchise, in Salmon's words, "brought the agency of party into every elector's home and . . . the politics of Westminster much closer to the electorate." 2 "By Matthew Cragoe is professor of modern history at the University of Hertfordshire.Having written widely on nineteenth-century electoral culture and the twentieth-century Conservative Party, he is currently leading a project that explores the cultural dimensions of parliamentary enclosure and landscape change in the English midlands, 1700-1900.The author would like to thank Paul Readman, Rohan MacWilliam, and the JBS 's anonymous referees for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article.1 Derek Beales suggests that while the number of electors rose by 50 percent, the number of active voters increased by 200-500 percent ("The Electorate before and after 1832: The Right to Vote, and the Opportunity," Parliamentary History 11, no. 1 [1992]: 139-50); see also Frank O'Gorman, "Reply: The Electorate before and after 1832," Parliamentary History 12, no. 2 (1993): 179.
Source: Journal of British Studies
DOI: 10.1086/587723
Author: Matthew Cragoe
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2016160304