Welsh Journals

FRANCHISE REFORM AND GLAMORGAN POLITICS IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY by IEUAN GWYNEDD JONES THE development of the universal parliamentary franchise of today can be traced in half a dozen Acts of Parliament from 1 8 3 2 to 1 949. Of these, the ones which effected the greatest changes in the political organization of the country were the first three, that is, the Great Reform Act of 1832, the Representa- tions of the People Act of 1867, and the Franchise and Redistribu- tion Acts of 1884-5. Taken as a whole, and in conjunction with the mass of legislation affecting the local government franchise, they constituted the legal and constitutional features of a period of change unparalleled in the history of the country. From being an oligarchic state both at the centre and in the localities Britain had developed in the course of about sixty years a form of government based upon ancient practices and traditions which was to a large extent democratic both in intention and in fact. Historians of British politics and institutions, responding to the fascination of the enquiry as to the genesis and consequences of such changes in the political life of the country, have examined minutely the details of these measures of parliamentary reform and of their passing, but their effects upon the political life of individual constituencies have been but cursorily examined, and this despite the fact that all these measures were largely reactions to, and themselves creative of, an increasingly close connection between the forces of public opinion and the course and nature of parliamentary legislation. The purpose of this paper is to present an outline of these changes as they affected the political life of Glamorgan, concentrating upon the legislation of 1832 and 1867 and the growth of democracy in the parlia- mentary representation of the county between those dates. The Reform Act of 1832 was not intended to be by its framers, nor did it in fact constitute, a revolutionary change in