Politics of Victorian England

During the time period that defined the Victorian era (between 1837 and 1901), the English government was a constitutional monarchy that also consisted of a Parliament.  Queen Victoria represented the monarchy.  The Parliament consisted of two parts: The House of Lords and The House of Commons.  This structure was called a bicameral legislature.  These two houses met separately and instituted laws by a majority vote.  Both houses had to ratify a bill before it became law.  Members of the House of Lords were not elected by the people but rather held a hereditary lifetime position.  A lord chancellor oversaw the House of Lords.  The House of Commons consisted of democratically elected members.  There were more people in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords (Parliament – Structure).

In this bicameral legislature there were two main political parties. They were the Whigs and the Tories.  These two parties were prominent throughout the Victorian era. These were also the first political parties in England.  They evolved slowly throughout the 1700s from just beliefs into established parties.   The Whigs supported the growth of Parliament and sought to limit royal power.  They were not supporters of the monarchy.  Whigs were liberal in that they believed that Parliament should make all the decisions and that all men should have the right to vote for and elect the members.  The other party, the Tories, supported the monarchy.  They were conservative.  The Tories included many wealthy or high-ranking officials.  These people were more inclined to believe that Parliamentary position, and the right to vote should be reserved for men who were wealthy and owned a lot of land.  They did not favor the common people.  Both parties would be considered conservative by today’s standards.

While the people elected members of Parliament, there were still many voting restrictions.  Throughout the Victorian era, acts of legislation were passed allowing more of the working and middle class to vote.  These laws were called the Reform Acts.  There were three Reform Acts, which were passed in 1832, 1867, and 1884.  As early as the 1760s by William Pitt, the Whig Prime Minister, advocated for parliamentary reform.  This idea continued into the 1800s, when in 1830, many political unions were formed to advocate voting reform.   The most prominent was the Birmingham Political Union headed by Thomas Attwood.  In 1832, Lord John Russell presented the first Reform Act to the House of Commons.  Following its passage, the act extended voting rights to men owning a house worth more than £10.  This gave approximately one in every five men the right to vote.  In 1867 the Second Reform Act gave the right to vote to all home owning men regardless of the value of the home.  This doubled the number of voters.  In 1884, the Third Reform Act extended the right to vote to many more poor people.  The right to vote was given to farmers and rural workers with the passage of the 1884 bill and the 1885 Redistribution Act.  It almost tripled the number of people who could vote.  Women, however, did not gain the right to vote in England until the Act of 1918.  Following the passage of this act, all men over 21 and all women over 30 were able to vote. The Equal Franchise Act, passed in 1928, gave everyone over 21 the right to vote  (Victorian Political History: An Overview).