On 6 February 1918, the Representation of the People Act received royal assent, tripling the British electorate from 7.7 million to 21.4 million.

For the first time, it extended the parliamentary franchise to women, granting the vote to those aged 30 and who were either: a property owner, a graduate voting in a university constituency, a member of or married to a member of the local government register (which listed who could vote in local elections). This excluded women living as domestic servants or with family members.

The act also extended the local government franchise to propertied unmarried women over 21 and married women over 30 (whose husbands were eligible to vote).

The Representation of the People Act 1918, sometimes called the Fourth Reform Act, was the culmination of decades of campaigning by both militant suffragettes and constitutional suffragists. While their efforts succeeded in raising the profile of the issue, the contribution of women to the home front during the First World War is widely credited with shifting parliamentary opinion.

Suffragette organisations, who had pursued a militant campaign for franchise reform, largely suspended their activities at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

Moreover, the legislation resulted in a significant expansion of the male franchise, granting the vote to all those aged over 21. It provided a “soldier’s vote” for those aged 19 who had seen active service.

Meanwhile, the disqualification of those in receipt of poor relief was removed during the passage of the legislation. The act also disenfranchised conscientious objectors until 1926.

In addition, the landmark legislation placed the Ballot Act 1872 on a permanent statutory footing.

These reforms were the outcome of a protracted parliamentary struggle that spanned some two years.

The most contentious issue during the bill’s passage was electoral reform – the proposed introduction of proportional representation (PR) and the alternative vote (AV). A protracted disagreement between the House of Commons and House of Lords was only resolved, somewhat chaotically, on 6 February 1918. This meant the act received royal assent mere hours before the end of the parliamentary session – when it might otherwise have been lost in its entirety.

***

The initial bill followed a special speaker’s conference on electoral and political reform, which sat from 1916 to 1917. The conference was charged with identifying a politically acceptable solution to widely acknowledged defects in the existing franchise. The Third Reform Act, which received royal assent on 6 December 1884, had established a uniform parliamentary franchise across the United Kingdom. As a result, around 60% of adult men were entitled to vote.

However, without further reform, millions of soldiers returning from the First World War would still have been unable to vote in the forthcoming – and long overdue – general election. The last election had been held as far back as December 1910.

The Parliament Act 1911 reduced the maximum duration of a parliament from seven years to five, meaning an election was due to take place at the latest on 31 January 1916. The parliament elected in 1910 had prolonged its existence through special legislation.

The cross-party conference, chaired by James Lowther as commons speaker, was composed of 32 MPs and peers. It was given a fourfold mandate to agree resolutions on “reform of the franchise”, the redistribution of parliamentary seats, the system of electoral registration, and the methods of election.

The scheme was the brainchild of Walter Long, the then president of the Local Government Board.

In August 1916, Long called for the creation of a “representative conference, not only of parties, but of groups” which could provide a “lasting settlement of a very old and difficult problem”.

The contribution came during a debate on the Special Register Bill, which sought to provide a temporary solution to the problems of wartime registration without addressing the registration or enfranchisement of soldiers.

In the same debate, the prime minister, H.H. Asquith, maintained that political reform should feature centrally in considerations over “work of reconstruction after the war”.

He stated: “It is eminently desirable that you should provide an electoral basis which will make that parliament reflective and representative of the general opinion of the country, and give to its decisions a moral authority which you cannot obtain from what I may call a scratch, improvised, and make-shift electorate.”

Asquith called for parliamentarians to “work out by general agreement some scheme under which, both as regards the electorate and the distribution of electoral power, a parliament can be created at the end of the war capable and adequate for discharging these tasks and commanding the confidence of the country.”

Lowther, who had clashed with franchise reform activists as speaker, was something of a reluctant chair.

He wrote to Asquith: “I cannot pretend that I look forward to it with enthusiasm. I fear that the number and complexity of the issues, which will be raised as we proceed, will overwhelm us and it will be almost impossible to obtain anything approaching unanimity upon the more important topics which will come up for discussion.”

***

The decision to include women in the post-war franchise was the most contentious issue considered by the conference. Lowther had endeavoured to “obtain an equal division of opinion” on this issue with regard to the composition of the conference.

Liberal MP Willoughby Dickinson, the most dedicated suffrage supporter among the members, recorded the moment the decision to extend the franchise to women was taken by the conference.

Dickinson stated: “I made my proposition that vote should go to occupiers or wives of occupiers, and this carried 9 to 8. Thus by a majority of one, the suffrage clause went forward!”

A proposal to grant the vote to women on the same terms as men was rejected by 10 votes to 12.

The conference survived a change of government in December 1916, when David Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as prime minister. It produced proposals that were adopted by Lloyd George’s Conservative-dominated coalition administration.

Reporting to the prime minister in January 1917, Lowther recorded that the conference had “decided by a majority that some measure of woman suffrage should be conferred.”

Lowther stated the conference’s recommendation that the franchise be extended to woman who were on the local government register, or whose husbands were, provided they had reached a specified age “of which 30 and 35 received most favour”.

In a commons debate on 28 March 1917, Asquith moved a motion thanking the speaker for chairing the electoral reform conference and endorsing the opinion “that legislation should promptly be introduced on the lines of the resolutions reported from the conference.” In doing so, the former prime minister explained why he had abandoned his long-standing opposition to women’s suffrage.

Addressing a packed chamber, Asquith argued that his resistance had always rested on “considerations of public expediency”. He conceded that the war had decisively altered that calculation.

“Well, sir, they have worked it out during this war”, he told the House. “How could we have carried on the war without them?”

Short of combat, Asquith argued, there was “hardly a service” essential to the war effort in which women had not proved themselves “at least as active and as efficient as men”.

He said women had carried out, “without any detriment to the prerogatives of their sex, work which three years ago would have been regarded as falling exclusively within the province of men.”

The former prime minister referred to the questions posed by post-war reconstruction “which will then necessarily arise in regard to women’s labour and women’s functions and activities in the new ordering of things.”

Asquith linked enfranchisement to the wider questions of post-war reconstruction, noting that issues surrounding “women’s labour and women’s functions and activities in the new ordering of things” would inevitably arise.

He also sought to definitively rebut the charge that reform amounted to a concession to militant pressure. Since the outbreak of war, he observed, there had been no return of the “detestable campaign” of pre-war agitation, and “no one can now contend that we are yielding to violence what we refused to concede to argument”.

For these reasons, Asquith said he now accepted the conference’s conclusion that “some measure of women’s suffrage should be conferred”.

He explained that its proposed age qualification had been “prompted partly by a desire to prevent a preponderance of female as compared with male voters”. But Asquith added that he personally found such a discrimination difficult once the “differentia of sex” was ignored.

Of course, there was opposition expressed to the proposed franchise extension, with Conservative MPs including Arthur Salter, Arnold Ward and Colonel Chaloner questioning the legitimacy of “very long parliament” legislating to pass such a constitutionally momentous change.

Salter argued that the “general body of the people hate and loathe the notion of entering upon these domestic matters at this time”.

Lloyd George, the prime minister, insisted that franchise reform had to be considered as a single settlement. He hailed the speaker’s conference as a “microcosm of our political world”.

Lloyd George warned that it would be indefensible to exclude women from political decision-making once the war had ended, declaring: “When we come to recast the whole of our industrial system, are we going to fling them out without giving them a voice in determining the conditions?

“All I can say is it is an outrage, it is ungrateful, unjust, inequitable.”

Senior Labour MP J. R. Clynes questioned whether the “soldiers now in Flanders, France, and elsewhere could carry on the War – could carry out their orders – if it were not for the hundreds of thousands of women who, even at midnight tonight, will be working in the scores or hundreds of munition factories throughout the country.”

The commons voted on an amendment, proposed by Salter, to defer any decision on women’s suffrage. It was rejected by 341 votes to 62.

***

On 22 May 1917, the Representation of the People Bill was introduced to the House of Commons by Sir George Cave as home secretary. The proposed legislation embodied the package agreed during the recent speaker’s conference.

Addressing the House, Cave noted that the decision to extend manhood suffrage excited “no emotion whatever”.

He declared: “Today the proposed addition excites no emotion whatever, except a feeling of satisfaction that, by making this addition, we shall approach nearer to the ideal of representative government, namely, to make parliament a mirror of the nation.”

The decision to extend the franchise to women, Cave added, was a “much more thorny subject.”

There was debate as to the proposals for extending the male franchise.

Conservative MP John Gretton moved that the voting age should be raised to 25, arguing that a man had not “attained his full capacity” at 21. He argued that no “man or woman should be allowed to exercise the great function of electing a government… until the character is formed and there is, in addition, some experience of the conditions of life.”

Cave argued that this amendment would disfranchise thousands of young men who were already on the electoral register or serving in the war.

Gretton’s proposal was rejected by the House.

Frederick Banbury, a Conservative MP who had resigned from the speaker’s conference, attempted to revive the ownership qualification (for land valued at £5 or more), which he described as “one of the oldest qualifications in this country.”

Banbury’s amendment would have strengthened the so-called “plural vote”, allowing owners of property in multiple constituencies to exercise more than one vote.

He declared: “Take the case of a man who is a resident in one constituency, and who, in another constituency, owns large properties… yet he is not allowed to have a vote for that property though a man who occupies a shop, or even a room for business purposes in that neighbourhood, would have a vote if only on account of selling a few bottles of ginger beer, or a packet of cigarettes, or a few newspapers.”

Irish nationalist MP Jeremiah MacVeagh referred to Banbury as the “only Tory left in the House.”

Banbury responded: “I am not ashamed of it. I only wish there were one or two more.”

There were exactly 34 more. Banbury’s amendment was rejected by 228 votes to 35.

The Representation of the People Act 1918, in the end, partially reduced plural voting. It allowed a maximum of one vote for residence and one vote for “other qualifications”. The “other qualifications” were restricted to Business Premises (£10 value) or a University degree – hence Banbury’s objection to individuals receiving an extra vote for “selling a few bottles of ginger beer”.

This was a compromise measure.

Cave objected to Banbury’s amendment on the grounds it would upset the delicate balance struck by the speaker’s conference: the maintenance of the university vote was only agreed (by radical and Liberal opponents) on the grounds that the ownership vote was abolished.

Cave stated: “If the ownership vote had been retained by the conference the House would not have assented to the other proposals put forward by the conference relating to the plural vote, university representation and other matters.”

(Voting in multiple constituencies was not prohibited until the Representation of the People Act 1948.)

There was also a protracted debate over the residency requirement aspects of the bill, which, while requiring an individual to show six months of residence, only mandated that they be in their specific constituency “on last day of the qualifying period”. Conservative MP Ronald McNeill argued that the one-day residency rule invited fraud by encouraging party organisers to move surplus supporters – called “swallow voters” (after the migratory bird) – into a neighbouring constituency.

McNeill explained, under the bill as drafted, a voter could spend “five months and 25 days” in one constituency and then cross into another “for the last day, or for two or three days” – so long as the constituencies lay within the same borough or county, or shared a border. Such an arrangement, he warned, required little more than “organisation and cooperation between astute party leaders” and would place “the purity of the register” in serious jeopardy.

In response, Cave made a significant concession, agreeing to accept a 30-day requirement. “I think, on the whole”, he said, “we have met a real difficulty in a real and sensible way.”

This concession, however, required further technical tinkering. The qualifying period deadlines were 15 January and 15 July in the original bill. Because working men typically moved on Christmas Day and Midsummer, in the former case they would only have 21 days of residence by 15 January – failing the new 30 day test. Cave was thereby forced to propose moving the statutory deadlines forward to 1 February and 1 August.

McNeill’s proposal, apparently accepted by the government, inspired opposition among those who still feared it would punish the working class. Liberal MP James Rowlands warned that if workers shifted “at any time under the 30 days they are going to be entirely disfranchised”.

Rowlands noted that in one constituency of 9,000 electors, nearly 50% were weekly tenants. He warned that if workers shifted “at any time under the 30 days they are going to be entirely disfranchised, because they will not have had six months’ residential qualification… they therefore will be swept entirely off the register.”

Irish nationalist MP Maurice Healy denounced the proposal as “an anti-working man amendment”.

Facing mounting opposition, the government retreated the following day on 7 June. Cave accepted a compromise, a bona fide residency test, proposed by Liberal MP Aneurin Williams: the one-day rule would remain, but party agents and observers would be allowed to object where it could be shown that a voter had moved in within 30 days of the qualifying date and left within 30 days afterwards. It would be left “to the objector to show that [a voter/resident] is not a bona fide case.”

Enraged, McNeill refused to withdraw his amendment, insisting that he had already informed absent colleagues that the 30-day agreement was “res judicata” (the final judgement). His motion – to replace the requirement that a voter be resident “on the last day of the qualifying period” with a requirement that he have been resident “for the last 30 days of the qualifying period” – was ultimately rejected by the House.

The government’s proposed compromise measure was agreed instead.

At the conclusion of the debate on 7 June, the House divided on clause one of the Representation of the People Bill. The clause was carried by 184 votes to 14, a majority of 170, establishing near-universal manhood suffrage by enfranchising men on the basis of six months’ residence or occupation of business premises. The longstanding property-based qualification, which had conferred the vote solely on the basis of ownership, was abolished.

***

As Cave had anticipated, the principle of manhood suffrage – apart from a handful of unreconstructed Tories – commanded broad consensus. The legislative battle centred, instead, on clause four, which set out the bill’s provisions for women’s suffrage.

On 19 June, Conservative MP Arnold Ward, an opponent of women’s suffrage, called for the provisions of clause four to be submitted to a referendum.

John Whitley, the chairman of the committee, ruled the amendment out of order, arguing that it was not procedurally permissible to introduce a “new constitutional principle” while the House was considering the bill in committee.

Later in the debate, Ward accused the government of exploiting wartime conditions to force through permanent constitutional change. What was being done, he warned, was “unfair, un-English, utterly devoid of the slightest vestige of justice, or fair play.”

The debate on 19 June centred on Banbury’s amendment that explicitly raised “the issue whether or not the vote should be given to women.” Banbury questioned the legitimacy of Parliament addressing a constitutional change of such magnitude, noting that the House had rejected women’s suffrage as recently as 1912 and 1913 and had since extended its own life on three occasions during the war.

He declared that the House, “which ought to have died 18 months ago”, did not have a “mandate nor any fitness for introducing a revolution of this character”.

He cited the conduct of Jeannette Rankin, a newly elected member of the United States congress, during the vote on America’s declaration of war on Germany. Rankin, a lifelong pacifist, had voted against the declaration. Banbury seized on her initial silence during the first reading of the vote roll call, claiming that she “became hysterical and could not give her vote”.

Banbury concluded that “her kindness of heart and her sex undoubtedly prevented her from giving a decision upon a question of peace or war.”

Banbury argued that women “are likely to be affected by gusts and waves of sentiment”. He stated that “when a woman has once made up her mind you cannot move her, and arguments are of no avail.”

Charles Hobhouse argued that granting the vote to women would impose upon them “a double obligation of motherhood and an artificial complication of industry and politics”. The situation, Hobhouse stated, would “put upon women a physical and mental strain which she is incapable of carrying.”

He added: “I ask the House, before they do this, under what I believe to be a totally false conception of what women should be asked to do, that they should ask themselves what will be the effect in the future of greater burdens than they can possibly carry being put upon women.”

Alexander MacCallum Scott argued that stable and legitimate government depended on aligning political authority with physical strength. He argued that there could be “no stable form of government which does not secure that the balance of physical force is in the same hands as the balance of political power.”

John Simon, a former home secretary and attorney general, challenged this suggestion, pointing to the role women played to “support and maintain the working” of the state during wartime. To deny women the vote after such service, Simon warned, risked “inflicting an injury upon women which is greater exactly in proportion to the way in which women have succeeded in helping the state at this time.”

Ramsay Macdonald, the senior Labour MP, accused MPs of relying on women as political organisers and campaigners while denying them formal political rights. “Have we been cheating the women all the time?”, he asked.

“The woman is exercising all the functions of an election, its pleasantness, its evils, its goodness, its badness; she is exercising them all right up to the door of the polling place”.

F.E. Smith, the attorney general and longstanding opponent of women’s suffrage, confirmed that he would vote in favour of extending the vote to women. However, he said it was “not true, speaking for myself, that I am a convert to this proposal.” He stated his support for the clause was “severely practical”, intended to preserve the speaker’s conference package and to avoid “spending long and fruitless years in controversy over the stale disputes of the last 20 or 30 years.”

Smith issued a veiled warning regarding the House’s opposition to proportional representation (PR) for Westminster elections – which had been a part of the speaker’s conference package.

Crucially, Smith signalled that his support was conditional upon the full package remaining intact. The attorney general said he would “reserve to myself… if the bill as a whole breaks down, the most complete liberty of action, at a later stage on woman suffrage.”

Lord Robert Cecil, a government minister, dismissed calls for a referendum, arguing that such a proposal had arisen “only… because it was desired to delay it and, if possible, defeat it.”

Conservative MP Lord Hugh Cecil mocked Hobhouse’s contention that voting would impose an intolerable strain on women, declaring: “Really, has he ever given a vote himself, and has he felt the smallest mental wear and tear? I survived it quite easily.”

He added: “I did not need a tonic or a stimulant to get through it. Even if I had a severe toothache I should still have been able to go through that simple clerical process of putting a cross opposite the name I least disagreed with.”

Banbury’s amendment was rejected by 385 votes to 55 – a majority of 330. After decades of resistance, the House of Commons had now committed itself to extending the parliamentary franchise to women.

***

The debate on 20 June turned to the proposed age qualification of 30 in clause four of the Representation of the People Bill. Conservative MP Basil Peto moved an amendment to remove the “age of 30 years” requirement, describing it as “absolutely arbitrary and illogical”.

Peto, an opponent of women’s suffrage, argued that the very women whose contributions to the war effort were seen to justify the franchise were precisely those excluded under the proposed age limit.

He declared: “Those very industrial workers… will not be enfranchised, but those enfranchised in the main will only be married women, who do not form the bulk of our industrial workers.”

Peto pointed out that those “who are to be enfranchised are to be in the main married women.”

He stated that there was not one “single particle of evidence before the committee that working men as a body in the country desire to see their votes neutralised or duplicated, as the case may be, by the votes of their wives.”

Peto added: “Therefore, on that ground alone, if we are to grant the franchise to women at all without any idea of the opinion of the women or the men in the country, we could not select a body of women about whom there is more probability that their inclusion will be resented by the very people whom honourable members thought to conciliate by the vote given last night.”

Lord Hugh Cecil mocked the age distinction as having no “rational bearing on the problem at all.”

He stated: “It is not merely illogical; it has no rational bearing on the problem at all. You might as well give votes to women who have red hair and make hair-dyeing a corrupt practice…

“I quite agree that you want some limitation of numbers, but it must be founded on some rational principle.”

Cave characterised the age limit as a “fair compromise” that had been “accepted by the advocates of women’s suffrage”. He questioned the motives of those arguing in favour of the amendment, noting the support for it among “strong opponents of the bill,”

He therefore warned that an attempt to lower the age to 21 would be viewed as an “amendment moved against the bill” and would force the government to “consider the whole position with regard to the bill.”

Cave’s intervention represented a threat to abandon the bill, in the event that the age qualification was lowered.

Willoughby Dickinson expressed his sympathy for the amendment as a lifelong advocate for full adult suffrage. But he spoke against Peto’s proposition as it would endanger the speaker’s conference package, which he had played a crucial role in negotiating.

Dickinson advised that changes to the bill would mean “the actual success of women’s suffrage is materially endangered”. He argued that while young workers would be excluded, their interests could be protected by “their mothers, their sisters and the women who know what they have been doing.”

Philip Snowden, another lifelong suffragist, admitted the “compromise” was the only way to unite the House. He expressed his fear that “any change made in the nature of that compromise the unity which manifested itself so magnificently in the division lobby last night would be at once dissolved.”

However, Snowden insisted that he would not lessen his efforts “in the way of agitation outside this House to secure the ultimate enfranchisement of all women in this country on the same terms as men.”

The debate also touched on sub-section three of clause four, which maintained the exclusion of the vast majority of women from the local government franchise. The bill included a provision preventing a husband and wife from both qualifying as local government electors “in respect of the same property”.

Charles Roberts proposed an amendment to strike this particular provision. He rose to address the apparent absurdity of the bill as drafted.

He stated: “The effect of what we are doing at the present time is this – we are enfranchising 6,000,000 women for parliamentary purposes. The effect of sub-section three is to enfranchise about 1,000,000 women for local government purposes.

“If you ask why the extra 5,000,000 are given the parliamentary vote, and thereby invested with a higher imperial responsibility, the answer is because these 5,000,000 women are the wives of husbands who have the local government qualification.”

Under sub-section three of clause four, an unmarried woman was entitled to “be registered as a local government elector for any local government electoral area where she would be entitled to be so registered if she were a man” – that is, if she is an occupier (propertied) and is older than 21.

Roberts argued that married women should not be excluded from exercising some say over “the affairs of the district in which they live – questions of the education of their children, sanitation, the construction of the main drainage of the district, water supply, and the rest of it.”

Furthermore, Roberts claimed that by excluding married women, the current local government register represented a “very bad selection of womanhood”.

Labour MP William Adamson condemned the measure as “class legislation with a vengeance”, given it would disproportionately exclude working-class wives while leaving single women and property-owning women largely unaffected.

Cave offered a defence of the distinction, insisting that local government representation was based on “local interests” and ratepayers rather than questions of “souls or people”, which were the responsibility of the House of Commons. Roberts nonetheless withdrew his amendment after Cave insisted that the committee should not make “tremendous inroads into the terms which we are seeking to pass into law”.

The fear of losing the speaker’s conference package, and therefore the bill entirely, once again prevailed.

In the end, Peto’s amendment was rejected by 291 votes to 25 – a majority of 266.

Clause four, having undergone only minor technical amendment, was subsequently approved by 214 votes to 17.

During the bill’s report stage, clause four was amended so that to ensure that married women could vote in local elections as well as their husbands.

Adamson, now the chairman of the Labour Party, argued that “no section of our people is better qualified to exercise the local government vote than the married women”. Banbury considered the proposal to be “extremely revolutionary”. On 20 November, an amendment which set a 30 years age qualification for the local government franchise was ultimately passed without a division.

In this regard, the commons stepped beyond the compromise package handed down by the speaker’s conference. The conference report stated “that a husband and wife shall not both be qualified in respect of the same premises.”

The position adopted in the bill at report stage meant that propertied women (occupiers) over 21 could vote in local government elections, but if they married, they would lose the vote until reaching 30.

Speaking during the bill’s House of Lords first reading debate in December 1917, Viscount Peel noted this “curious result”.

He told the upper chamber that “a single woman of 21 who has qualified can vote in a local government election in her own right, but if she has not got a qualification of her own and she marries at 21 she has to wait nine years (until she is 30) before she can exercise the vote.

“So much for the woman’s vote.”

***

The committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill continued on 20 June with consideration of clause five, the so-called soldiers’ and sailors’ clause, which set out “special provisions for persons serving on war service.” Cave moved an amendment to delete the words “during the continuance of a war”, thereby making the military franchise a permanent feature of electoral law – as opposed to a temporary wartime expedient.

Historically, joining the services often meant losing the vote due to the difficulty of establishing residency.

He also proposed a new means of military voter registration, allowing soldiers to vote in their home constituencies – as opposed to where their barracks were situated.

Cave’s move represented a wholesale redrafting of clause five. The committee chairman was subsequently forced to rule several amendments out of order because they no longer applied.

Conservative MP Rowland Hunt objected to the government’s conduct. He complained that members had been given no opportunity to scrutinise the new text in advance, declaring: “I did not get my Papers until 12 o’clock. I call it an outrage that this should be done.”

Cave defended the redraft as necessary, while apologising for its rushed introduction. The home secretary argued that every “soldier and sailor who is on active service and on full pay should have the right to vote prima facie for the place of his home.”

He added: “I do not think it would be the wish of soldiers to vote for the place where their barracks are situated.

“They are interested, generally speaking, in their homes, in the place where their wives are if they are married, and where their parents are if they are unmarried, the place where they were brought up in and are known and to which they hope to return.”

Without such a provision, Cave warned, “the effect might be to throw a very large soldiers’ vote upon certain districts in this country, in such places as Aldershot or Salisbury Plain”. He argued that the provision was also needed for the “professional soldier” who may have “left it as the bad boy of the village” and made the army his permanent calling. In such cases, Cave proposed, a soldier or sailor could, if they so chose, “be registered for the place where he is serving or for the place where he is, in fact, in residence.”

Conservative MP Robert Sanders welcomed the amendment, stating: “A man is to have a vote qua soldier or sailor, not only in time of war, but also in time of peace. That is a thing that we ought to have done long ago.

“It has always been a blot on our franchise law that directly a man joined the services of the crown in a naval or military capacity it was almost impossible for him to have a vote.”

The House adjourned at 11:16 pm to study the new-look clause five.

When the debate resumed on 25 June, attention turned to amendments to the retrofitted clause five. Conservative MP Leslie Wilson moved an amendment to enfranchise servicemen from the age of 19. “If the state considers a man of 19 old enough to go out and fight for his country”, he argued, “surely he is old enough to have a vote for his country.”

Wilson said that there were “many soldiers and sailors of my own acquaintance who have served for 20 years, 30 years, and even longer, who have never had a vote for representatives in this House.”

Wilson argued that, in the wake of the war, parliament should be prepared to grant soldiers and sailors “greater privileges… in future than are to be given even to civilians.”

The amendment carried a simple message, Wilson stated; it would tell soldiers: “You have volunteered and risked your life for your country. We, on our side, are prepared to grant you not a concession, but a privilege, which will last all the time that you are in full pay in His Majesty’s Service.”

Conservative MP Clement Kinloch-Cooke supported Wilson’s amendment and the general redrafting of clause five. He said he was “dumbfounded” when he saw the bill in its original form, which only “gave the franchise to soldiers and sailors who have been engaged in the war and for a period of twelve months after the termination of the war.”

Ronald McNeill supported the proposal, warning of the “intolerable” spectacle of young veterans being excluded from the post-war settlement.

He asked the House: “Are all the grey-headed old fogies like we who sit in this House going to the ballot-box to vote on these problems while those who have made it possible to bring that state of things about stand round the polling booths because we will not allow them to vote until they are 21?”

John Simon, however, warned of creating a permanent constitutional divide between the “military voter” and the “civil voter.”

Similarly, Herbert Samuel, Liberal MP and former cabinet minister, said the amendment was illogical. He noted that boys well under 19 faced mortal danger at sea, yet no one proposed extending the franchise to 15-year-olds.

Samuel stated: “Hitherto, it has been held that a man has not reached the age of maturity and judgment until twenty-one; and that reason alone… should lead members to support the government in resisting the amendment now before the committee”.

Banbury warned that if 19 was fit for a soldier, the same would be demanded for “a boy of 19 who is not in the army – perhaps who has taken honours at Oxford.”

Cave argued the vote was not a “reward for public service”; if it was, he added, the House would have to consider “others who are doing admirable work for our defence, such as munition workers.”

But once again, the government sought a compromise. Local government minister Herbert Fisher acknowledged that rewarding those who had fought was an “attractive formula”. He recognised a “strong current of opinion” in favour of enfranchising those who had seen active service.

Fisher floated the possibility of extending the franchise, at least for the first election after the war, to 19-year-old soldiers. He suggested that the government would consider whether “some form of words” could be devised to reflect the clear view of the House.

He spoke of giving “the franchise at all events for the election after the War – I do not say for all time – to soldiers of nineteen, and they will see whether they themselves can find any form of words which will meet the opinion of this House as expressed by the great majority of the speakers who have spoken to-day.”

He promised that the government would “consider the whole matter again before report”.

To guard against manipulation of the military vote, Banbury proposed a further amendment requiring a minimum period of service in a constituency before servicemen were given the option of registering there. Banbury originally proposed a three-month requirement; Major Newman supported the proposal, warning against “unseemly attempts at vote-snatching between party agents.”

Fisher countered by suggesting a soldier should have been stationed in a place for “not less than one month.” The compromise was accepted.

Cave accepted the one-month requirement, and clause five, as amended, was added to the bill.

***

The next significant development in the bill’s progress came during the committee of the whole House’s consideration of clause eight, which dealt with disqualifications from the franchise.

On 26 June, Liberal MP John Whitehouse moved to abolish the long-standing exclusion of those in receipt of Poor Law relief – a restriction that had shaped the franchise since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

Whitehouse argued that the grant of Poor Law relief was “wholly analogous to the grant of old age pensions”; he argued that there was little reason “for Poor Law relief to be a disqualification from the exercise of the franchise as there is for old age pensions to be a disqualification.”

He also pointed to the fact that “social conditions in our country have changed very rapidly in the last few years.”

Women, he said, now occupied “a place in our civic life which no one could have realised or anticipated a few years ago”, and were therefore increasingly likely to receive Poor Law relief.

He told the House: “I think it would be very unfair to disqualify from the new franchise for women those women who have received Poor Law relief.”

He said it should not “be regarded as a stigma in a great number of these cases when women receive Poor Law relief.”

J. D. Rees defended the existing rule, which was maintained in clause eight, arguing that it would be improper for those dependent on public support to effectively influence public expenditure at the ballot box. “Is a person who is living upon the public,” he asked, “to decide how much money is to be raised from other people who are paying for his keep?”

Conservative MP John Spear, a member of a council representing 560 boards of guardians, spoke in support of the amendment. He said it was “painful that the people who have served the country well as regards labour should, through illness, have had to get assistance from the rates.”

He declared: “As a member of a board of guardians it has often gone to my heart to see those who have worked hard all their lives driven, towards the end, to ask for relief…

“They ought not to have this insult placed upon them any longer.”

Responding for the government, Hayes Fisher accepted the substance of Whitehouse’s case, acknowledging a “complete consensus of opinion that the speaker’s conference had really not reached the high-water mark which the House would desire in dealing with this matter.”

The House had shown itself to be more progressive than the formal speaker’s package compromise suggested

Fisher noted that the original 1832 disqualification was intended to “encourage thrift” and “sturdy independence”. This position, the minister maintained, was rendered obsolete by the expansion of state aid to include medical relief, old age pensions, and school meals.

Fisher described the rule as inflicting “a very great hardship on many men who, often for only a very short time, have had to have recourse to the Poor Law.” The government, he said, was prepared “to go considerably further than the recommendations made by the speaker’s conference”.

Fisher told the House: “We are really sweeping away the whole of the disqualification for Poor Law relief unless a person is actually an inmate of a workhouse.”

The minister stated that “anyone who is actually resident in a Poor Law institution should not have the franchise conferred on him.”

Fisher said that Cave, the home secretary, would “propose himself or will accept an amendment”, providing that inmates of prisons, Poor Law institutions and lunatic asylums should not be qualified to vote.

Fisher also made clear, however, that this relaxation would apply only to the parliamentary franchise. In relation to local government elections, he said that he did “not feel able to go further here than to remove this disqualification in the case of a parliamentary elector.”

Fisher’s Poor Law relief amendment was ultimately accepted by the House without a division.

The debate on 26 June then turned to an amendment proposed by Ronald McNeill, which sought to disqualify from the franchise anyone “exempted [from military service] on the ground of conscientious objection”.

McNeill characterised the attitude of conscientious objectors as a form of “selfishness and self-righteousness raised to the maximum degree”. He argued that they enjoyed “the liberties and the immunities that have been preserved to them by the efforts of other people.”

He added: “In other words, these men are content, and are being allowed and will be allowed till the War is over to enjoy the sweets of life out of the blood of their fellow creatures.”

The Conservative MP asked whether, once the war was over, conscientious objectors should “enjoy all the rights and privileges of the state which they would not lift a hand to preserve”.

He declared: “To do so would an outrage upon all the enlightened conscience of the nation as a whole.”

McNeill framed the disfranchisement as the natural “corollary” to the objector’s own demand to be treated as an “exception”. He argued that “the privileged position of these men was given to them for a particular purpose on their own initiative and on their own insistence.”

McNeill maintained: “It was by their own desire and on their own demand that while the war was going on they were treated as exceptional people. That gives them no title after the war is over to be treated as unexceptional people.”

Lord Hugh Cecil led the opposition to the amendment, warning that it would “transgress all the principles of legislation and national justice”.

He argued that parliament was “bound in honour” by the exemption to conscription it had created under the Military Service Act 1916. “It certainly seems to me to be part of the Christian religion”, Cecil said, “that if a person sincerely thinks a thing wrong, then to him it is wrong.’

The Conservative MP went further, rejecting McNeill’s apparent contention that public safety was the supreme law. “It is profoundly untrue”, he said.

“If the safety of the public is the supreme law, the sinking of the Lusitania [British ocean liner sunk by a German U-boat in 1915] was right, and the bombing of towns and the killing of children would be right.”

He urged the House not to “pass on the way where we have seen Germans go before”.

Liberal MP Josiah Wedgwood offered a defence of conscientious objectors, declaring that he felt “the greatest sympathy for them”.

He stated: “I think I am prouder of my country than I was before, because it has produced people who have sufficient conscientious scruples to enable them to face a long term of imprisonment rather than upset their consciences.”

Speaking for the government, Cave advised the House to reject the amendment. He expressed personal “antipathy and contempt” for some conscientious objectors, but cautioned against putting “them all in the one mould”

He said: “There are those whose conduct has shown that they have the feelings of Englishmen, and have done their duty in other ways than by fighting.”

Cave warned that the proposal risked imperilling the entire bill for the sake of “some few hundreds of votes”. He also reminded the House that parliament had only recently passed legislation expressly allowing exemption on grounds of conscience.

“If it had been desired to impose a penalty upon him in consequence of that claim that was the time”, Cave argued, “that bill was the place, where such a provision ought to have been inserted.”

McNeill’s amendment was rejected by 141 votes to 71 – a majority of 70.

Ulster Unionist MP Hugh O’Neill’s amendment to disqualify so-called “bad soldiers” convicted of desertion or cowardice was rejected without a division – as was Rowland Hunt’s attempt to disfranchise those interned under the Defence of the Realm Acts. In both cases, the government maintained that the franchise should not be used as an additional penalty.

The disenfranchisement of conscientious objectors was eventually added to the bill during its report stage in the commons on 21 November 1917.

An amendment, which proposed the disqualification of conscientious objectors for five years after the official termination of the war, was passed by 209 to 171 on a free vote. Popular opinion was said to have been “largely in favour of this amendment”. Cave, speaking in a personal capacity, stated his opposition to the amendment for its retrospective nature; he argued that a legal disability could not be imposed on men for “taking advantage of [their] statutory rights.”

During the debate, Conservative MP Richard Barnett addressed those the amendment intended to disenfranchise: “For your religious views, we respect you; for your benevolence, we thank you; but for your failure to discharge the first duty of a citizen, we disfranchise you.”

Since the end of the war was defined as 31 August 1921 under the Termination of the Present War (Definition) Act 1918, most conscientious objectors were prevented from voting until 1926.

***

Arguably the most consequential change proposed during the bill’s passage arose on 4 July 1917, when the committee of the whole House turned to clause 15 of the Representation of the People Bill, which provided for the introduction of proportional representation.

Subsection one of clause 15 stipulated that in any constituency returning three or more members, an election “of the full number of members shall be according to the principle of proportional representation, each elector having one transferable vote as defined by this act.”

For single-member seats, as set out in subsection two of clause 15, the alternative vote would be introduced.

Clause 15 marked a striking departure from the existing electoral settlement. Since the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, the House of Commons had been dominated by single-member constituencies elected on a first past the post (FPTP) basis. The creation of new multi-member constituencies, if agreed by the commons, would be effected through instructions to the Boundary Commissioners.

On the question of proportional representation, the government did not take a position, leaving MPs free to vote according to their own judgment.

Conservative MP Montague Barlow moved an amendment that called for the deletion of sub-section one. He argued that merging three to five constituencies into one would “destroy what I consider to be one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable, experiences and powers of a member of this House.”

He continued: “I mean the close personal contact between a member and his constituents.”

Barlow argued that without this relationship “the position of a member of this House was a very unsatisfactory one indeed.”

Barlow also warned that PR would favour an undesirable type of candidate. He described a figure who concentrated on minor local issues at the expense of national policy. “It will put more and more power into the type of candidate”, he said, “who, for purposes of shorthand, I may call the ‘grubber’.”

Such men, he argued, do “not deal with the larger political issues which, after all, are the main duties of a member of parliament.”

Conservative MP Leslie Scott broadened the debate to the British Empire, warning that single-member constituencies were also producing unrepresentative outcomes in the colonies. “We are the mother of parliaments”, he declared.

“We are here to set an example to the British Empire so far as we can, and to show the best system of representative election that we can devise.”

Citing Australia, Scott noted that in Adelaide the Labour Party held all 15 seats despite the opposition polling around 40% of the vote. In the mining districts of Western Australia, he added, all 10 members of the local parliament “all belong to the Labour party, and the employers and the rest of the community do not hold a single seat.”

He added: “Under proportional representation the minority party would have approximately a proportionate share of the representation.”

Liberal MP Thomas Whittaker warned that PR would “hamstring majorities”.

He added: “The ideal is a House of Commons that will give us the best, the most effective and the most efficient government, and you will not get that by collecting here a microcosm of all the conflicting and discordant elements of the nation.

“That is the way to get a bear garden and not an efficient, deliberative, legislative assembly.”

Among the principal advocates of the proposed PR system were Asquith, the former prime minister, and Lord Robert Cecil.

Asquith said he had become “growingly impressed not only with the unfairness but with the illogical application of the representative principle by the adoption of the simple rule of majorities”.

He cited Wales, where Conservative and Unionist minorities were “hardly” represented; Ireland, where Unionists in the south and west “never returned a single member”; and large cities, such as Birmingham, where Liberal and Labour minorities were “practically without representation.”

He concluded that this was “not a satisfactory state of things”, referring to the problem of minority representation as a “disease in the body politic”.

The former prime minister rejected the doctrine of “virtual representation”, under which minorities were deemed represented by MPs elected elsewhere. “That is not representation at all”, he said. “That is, indeed, …a travesty.”

Cecil argued that the existing system exaggerated swings of opinion and produced “sweeping” majorities. This, the minister said, had damaged the “prestige of the House of Commons”.

He stated: “I do not think there is any use in concealing the fact that the House of Commons does not hold the same position in the country it used to hold. I regard that as a most disastrous state of things”.

Cecil denigrated the “exaggeration of the party system” as a “very great danger to the House of Common”. He argued that prospective representatives were excluded unless they accepted “the full party doctrine, whatever it may be.”

In the mid-19th century, he observed, many MPs were “not attached, or were attached in the very slightest way” to the political parties.

Cecil added: “There is nothing approaching that at the present day. Anyone who recognises that a person can scarcely attain a seat in this House unless he is what is called a good party man will see the real cause of a great deal of the deterioration of prestige.”

Moreover, Cecil argued that many of the greatest parliamentarians – including Gladstone, Disraeli, the Marquess of Salisbury and Lord Derby – might have been excluded under such conditions.

He concluded: “I do think that one of the most urgent reforms of the constitutional government of this country is to try to diminish the vehemence and violence of the party system.”

Cecil argued that improved representation for minorities would inevitably improve “the individuality and the mental character of the members of this House.”

Caradoc Rees pointed to the financial cost of multi-member elections. He estimated that sending a postcard to voters in one of the expanded constituencies would cost £250, while campaigning as an individual in a five-member constituency could total £2,600. In this regard, Rees argued that the single transferrable vote (STV), as proposed in subsection one of clause 15, would make “it impossible for any individual man unless he sticks to the party ticket to get into this House.”

He concluded: “I hope proportional representation will be defeated, because if it is not you will get wire-pulling in excelsis… Such a system will sink all individuality – in fact it will kill it.”

Austen Chamberlain, a senior Conservative MP and secretary of state for India, dismissed STV as a device to “get in nobody knows who, elected by nobody knows what, in a manner that no fellow can understand.” He argued that the proposed system would “prevent the majority from securing what the general electoral system of the country would give them.”

Chamberlain expressly criticised a tactical retreat, agreed by proponents of proportional representation led by Scott, that London would be exempted from the scheme. Chamberlain, a representative of Birmingham, argued that advocates of PR had conspired to conduct an electoral experiment on the supposedly “vile bodies” of constituencies like his.

Referring to his Birmingham constituents, he complained: You dare not do it to London, and you say, ‘Let us do it to Birmingham. Let us do it to Glasgow, to Liverpool, to Cardiff, to Edinburgh, and to half a dozen selected constituencies.’

“They are to be made the victims of an experiment in a system in whose efficacy its authors have no faith.”

He questioned whether MPs would brush aside the objections to the scheme “because the speaker’s conference, as an incident in a work which they were set to do, thought it would be interesting to make this experiment on our vile bodies”.

Furthermore, Chamberlain framed the debate as a choice between minority representation and effective government. He argued that some advocates of PR believed that “nothing but a minority ought ever to be represented”.

He added: “There are others who think that the majority may be over-represented. Of the two, I would sooner have the majority over-represented…

“No system will give you an exact measure of the political forces in the country, but if you must err on one side or the other, then in my opinion, in the long run, no matter to which party interest it accrues, the interest of the country is that the majority for the time being shall be strong, so that the government of the day shall be effective.”

Chamberlain also pointed to the complexity of the scheme, questioning whether the commons truly wanted the “senior wrangler of Cambridge” working out the “exact mathematical proportion of members” each constituency could elect.

Alfred Mond, the first commissioner of the works, sought to rebut the suggestion that STV was too complicated for the average voter to understand. He argued that such concerns underestimated “the English elector and put him on a lower level than electors in other countries.”

He added: “It seems to me to savour of belittling our English people compared with people in other countries.”

Mond also challenged the argument that STV empower candidates standing on eccentric, single-issue platforms – so-called “faddists”. He contended that the existing FPTP system actually empowered “small cliques” because candidates in close contests were forced to pander to tiny margins.

He spoke of a hypothetical constituency in which party agents tell both candidates “that there are 250 anti-vaccinationists in that division who can turn the election”.

He added: “The rapidity and zeal with which both candidates suddenly develop anti-vaccinationist views is remarkable.”

Mond argued that PR would end this “chase of the wobbler”.

He also pointed to the alleged inconsistencies in the argument of those opposed to STV, citing Chamberlain’s contribution.

Mond stated: “At one moment opponents of proportional representation, with great vehemence, say that the adoption of this principle will fill the House with cranks and faddists, and in another portion of their speech they equally inform the committee that the machine would have entire control, and that no independent person would be returned to this House.

“That really is no exaggeration of that which occurred in the speech of the right honourable gentleman the secretary for India [Chamberlain].”

John Simon contended that the next parliament should mirror the realities of Britain’s emerging pluralistic political culture – referring, implicitly, to the rise of the Labour Party.

The post-war parliament, Simon stated, would be “one of the most important parliaments that ever has been called together” and forced to deal with “tasks of the most unusual complexity and difficulty”. He argued, therefore, that it should be a “consultative body rather than a ratifying body.”

Simon submitted: “The next parliament is a parliament which ought to contain representatives of more than just two alternative points of view”.

Frederick Smith, the attorney general, intervened to deliver a wider warning against preserving the pre-war political order.

“Any man who supposes that elections are going to take place under the old conditions and with the old controversies between the two parties is mad”, he declared.

“New issues, new controversies, new parties are going to determine the future.”

Smith concluded by appealing to those on the Conservative benches who had “defended the cause of stability”. He argued that their “one chance of salvation” lay in establishing “an exact equipoise in the state between the strength of the constituencies and the strength of the House of Commons.”

He added: “The degree in which you succeed in that object will be the measure of your success in maintaining those causes which minorities will always defend.”

Barlow’s amendment was approved by 201 votes to 169 – a majority of 32.

The House of Commons thereby rejected the measure, proposed by the cross-party speaker’s conference, to introduce a system of proportional representation for elections to the House of Commons.

The questions MPs grappled with in this debate – whether the ideal representative was a “national statesman” or a “local grubber”, and whether the House should be a “microcosm of the nation” or an “efficient engine of government” – continue to shape political discourse today.

At the bill’s report stage on 22 November, an attempt to re-insert the principle of PR for constituencies returning three or more members, proposed by Aneurin Williams, was rejected by 202 votes to 126. That was despite the intervention of Frederick Smith, who doubted the sincerity of those MPs who said they did not understand STV.

He questioned whether it was “really to be put forward with gravity that a member of this House of more than the average intelligence of members of this House is incapable of understanding a system under which the peasants of Sweden have successfully and intelligently voted in the past few weeks”.

Meanwhile, an amendment to strike out subsection two, which established the alternative vote for single member constituencies, was defeated by 150 votes to 121.

The debate ran along the same lines as that which was conducted during the bill’s committee stage.

Barnett denigrated the “hocus pocus of taking some votes from this man and some from another and gradually building up a majority” as “perfectly laughable”.

He added: “We shall be told it is done in Tasmania or Finland or somewhere else. No doubt it is. No doubt honourable members will be able to give us chapter and verse for Nova Zembla or Lapland or some other country where this is an unqualified success, but in this oldest of parliaments, whose electoral system may involve some anomalies, as what electoral system does not, but which is the glory and admiration of the world, I hope the House will think twice and thrice before it introduces, without a great deal more argument than has been adduced here, this absurd scheme instead of the plain straightforward system that we have at present.”

George Younger, who proposed the amendment, argued that AV was “designed, I think, to make sure that the majority is not represented in this House”.

AV thereby remained part of the bill which was subsequently sent for further scrutiny in the House of Lords.

***

The question of proportional representation was also the cause of a constitutional standoff between the commons and Lords over the legislation.

In the upper chamber, Viscount Peel introduced the bill on 11 December 1917 as the “fourth Reform Act since 1832” – claiming it was “far more comprehensive than any of its predecessors.”

He declared: “It is a destroyer as well as a creator. It cuts great slices out of the imposing mass of our statutes, and I believe I am right in saying that it destroys more previous acts, or portions of acts, than any other measure that has ever been presented to your lordships’ House.”

He acknowledged that the bill was an effective fudge between opposing political factions, noting that “compromise and logic are old opponents.”

Peel added: “The bill is founded… upon the findings of the speaker’s conference, on the theory that if a body so variously composed and so representative of different parties could agree upon a series of propositions, such an agreement would probably commend itself to parliament and also to the country.”

The bill received its second reading in the Lords on 19 December 1917 without a division.

On 10 January 1918, peer considered the enfranchisement of women in clause four.

The debate centred on an amendment by Earl Loreburn, which proposed to strike out subsections one and two of the clause on extending the parliamentary franchise to women.

Lord Finlay, the lord chancellor, dismissed the speaker’s conference recommendation as lacking “principle of any sort or kind underlying it”. He warned of the effect of “war weariness – loss of sons, husbands, brothers” on women as “inexperienced voters”.

He stated: “Would not there be a vast amount of material for agitation, by those who are called pacifists, who are in favour of a hurried peace, among the millions of women who without political experience it is proposed to enfranchise by this bill?”

The Earl of Selborne, referring to the place of the House of Lords in the constitution, warned that the upper chamber could not win a battle on this issue without splitting “the nation from top to bottom”.

He declared: “You will have against you not only those of the women who have desired the franchise; you will have against you the men who desired the franchise, and the seamen and soldiers who are looking forward to the franchise.

“The majority in this House, splendid as would be their courage, would be almost isolated in the nation. You would have less support in the nation than the analogous majority had before the Reform Bill of 1832.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, said that the position of the commons on women’s suffrage “was a recognition of a complete change of opinion which common sense and daily experience shows us to be taking place among the people.”

He noted the absence of organised protest against the bill, stating: “Everybody we meet shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘I suppose now the thing is inevitable’, or says, ‘I am keenly in favour of it.’”

He concluded: “For this House to set itself against what is now decided ultimately to be done… could in my view be justified only by absolutely overwhelming evidence of a strength of opinion outside, of which there is not at the moment a vestige.”

The leader of the House, Earl Curzon, accepted this view in contribution.

Curzon said he remained unconvinced that the proposed enfranchisement of women was “either fair, or desirable, or wise”. Moreover, he warned that it could “never be taken back” and that “it may be ill-used, it may be misused, it may even be abused.”

But the House leader argued that if the Lords defied the large majority in the commons (385 to 55) in favour of the measure, the upper chamber would be forced into a “humiliating surrender”.

He stated: “I cannot vote either way upon this amendment, for I am loathe to assume the responsibility of embarking upon a course which I might not be able to pursue, and as regards which I might be accused of having precipitated a conflict from which your Lordships would not emerge with credit.”

Curzon warned of a “controversy which would be carried on by a splitting of the nation from top to bottom in a most mischievous way, and that at the very crisis of a war upon the steady and uninterrupted and undistracted continuance of which the welfare of the British Empire and of the world depends.”

Loreburn’s amendment was ultimately rejected by 134 votes to 71. By a majority of 63, peers accepted women’s suffrage on the terms agreed by the commons.

On 22 January, the Lords considered an amendment, proposed by Selborne, to reinsert proportional representation as part of the bill.

Lord Parmoor argued that PR was the only mechanism that could prevent Britain from falling into the hands of a “proletariat” majority.

He told the House: “You have, what is very dangerous, on the one side what is called the proletariat; you have on the other side representation of all interests, all classes, all ideas, and all opinions, and I, for one, believe you can trust that and trust it well, having regard to the history of our own country and our empire.”

He dismissed those calling for “distorted representation” by the maintenance of the existing system.

Parmoor insisted: “A government is strong which has the united opinion of the people at its back. A government is strong which is supported by truly representative institutions.”

The Lords ultimately backed the principle of PR, set out in Selborne’s amendment, by 131 votes to 42.

Immediately after the division on proportional representation, the Lords considered an amendment, proposed by Viscount Galway, to strike the provision on the alternative vote from the bill.

Galway sought to explain AV in a way that undermined it.

He told the House: “If there are three candidates and A polls, 2,400, B, 1,600, and C 1,000, A has not a majority of votes. The votes of the last candidate are then taken and added.

“What is the result? Supposing that A only gets fifty of those votes, it means that B is elected member for the constituency, although in the first case A has beaten B by 800, and C by 1, 400.

“That, I am sure, is not what British electors like or want in an election.”

On 22 January, therefore, the Lords voted by a large majority – 57 to 9 – to strike the alternative vote from the bill.

The bill returned to the Lords for its report stage and third reading on 29 January 1918.

Lord Balfour, a Conservative former cabinet minister, moved an amendment to provide specific instructions to the boundary commissioners regarding the operation of PR and set out a multi-member constituency scheme.

Balfour argued that the combination of single-member constituencies and rigid party organisation have helped “to ruin the really representative character of the House of Commons”. He said they “unduly and improperly increase the power of the accidental majority for the time.”

He added: “Parliament is often described as the great council of the nation. Let us, therefore, have the advantage of all the intellect and all the thought that we can get from every different interest.

“If we do not get that then we have no right to call our parliament truly representative, and the more people feel that they are not having due representation and having their opinions put forward by those whom they can trust the more friction and difficulty will be produced.

“Let us have every class, every interest, every opinion represented in its due strength, and not magnified one at the expense of the other.”

Balfour’s amendment was accepted without a division. The bill then received its third reading and was returned to the commons as amended.

***

In the House of Commons on 30 January, Conservative MP William Burdett-Coutts moved a motion to disagree with the Lords in its amendment reinstating proportional representation as part of the Reform Bill scheme.

Burdett-Coutts questioned the claim of a non-elected chamber to alter a decision “given in this House with regard to the methods by which we, the representatives of the people, are chosen.”

He characterised PR as a “bolt-hole of the theorist who finds himself in a practical impasse.”

Chamberlain warned that proportional representation would “convert this House of Commons into a place of barter and sale”.

He added: “Instead of being a great, free, deliberative assembly, it will be a place where business is conducted by niggling and haggling behind the speaker’s chair.”

Cave, speaking in a personal capacity, explained that he had previously refrained from declaring a position on proportional representation because of his responsibility for steering the bill through the commons. He said he had deliberately held back, fearing that “a moment would come when the judgment of the House on this question might possibly be decisive of the fate of the bill”.

The home secretary added: “I think that that time has come”.

Cave said that upon seeing the Lord Balfour’s proposals he “thought at once of the old Latin phrase, ‘Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat’ [Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad].”

The amendment, he warned, would “destroy the separate representation of, and to merge in the adjoining counties, such boroughs as Derby, Exeter, Gloucester, Ipswich, Norwich, and others which I need not mention.”

He concluded that acceptance of the amendment “would involve grave peril to the bill”, advising MPs that if they wished to pass the bill, “the House should reject the amendment.”

Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary and former Conservative prime minister, joined Cecil in rising to oppose the motion to disagree.

Balfour said that he approved of PR because “in constituencies where the parties are evenly balanced small, persistent, and selfish interests have now too much power.”

The foreign secretary referred to the prevalence of “faddism”, which he argued that the current system privileged. “I think that it is one of the worst diseases from which a representative system can suffer”, Balfour added.

“The disease is inevitable in single-member constituencies where the parties happen to be evenly balanced.”

The issue of proportional representation thus pitted the home secretary (Cave) directly against the foreign secretary (Balfour).

Adamson, the chairman of the Labour Party, argued that large multi-member seats would mean it was a “physical impossibility for one to get round his constituency”.

Adamson told the House: “I think it is an admirable thing for a member of parliament to be in the closest personal touch with his constituents.”

Philip Snowden, also a Labour MP, said he could not allow Adamson “to identify the whole of the Labour party with” opposition to PR .

He declared: “That resolution in favour of proportional representation, that is the resolution in favour of the Lords amendment in regard to proportional representation, was carried at that conference of 1,000 representatives of Labour without a single dissentient voice.”

Snowden was referencing the 17th annual Labour Party conference, “the largest conference of Labour ever held”, which had concluded just days prior in Nottingham.

Moreover, Snowden pointed out that PR had been the policy of the International Socialist Conference since 1889.

He added: “In the years between the last general election and the outbreak of the war the Labour Party contested 14 by-elections. They did not win one seat…

“The Labour Party spent on an average £1,000 in each of these contests – that is to say, they spend £14,000 and did not win a single seat, although they polled on an average nearly 30%.”

In the end, the motion to disagree with the Lords amendment was passed by 223 votes to 113 – a majority of 100.

On 31 January, the commons moved to defend its position on the alternative vote in the face of overwhelming opposition in the House of Lords.

Liberal MP Charles Frederick White moved to a motion to disagree with the Lords amendment. White argued that the proposition was “so self-evident” that any debate would be limited to “the purely partisan and time-serving supposition that it is desirable to secure the representation of minorities by what I can only call a side-wind.”

Liberal MP Edward Hemmerde argued that the existing electoral system “has always been to the advantage of the party which – I say it in no offensive way – is either the conservative, or, as some would say, the reactionary party.”

Hemmerde argued that without AV, the House would not be “a microcosm of the nation”.

Speaking in favour of AV, Herbert Samuel condemned the fact that there were “members sitting in this House, who notoriously, to their own knowledge and to the knowledge of all of us, do not on the main questions of the day represent the desires of the majority of their constituents.”

Adamson, speaking for the Labour Party, stated his support for the alternative vote. His contribution included a swipe at Snowden, who he said had “emphatically disputed my right to speak on behalf of the party in the manner in which I did.”

He accused Snowden of relying on a motion passed at the “fag-end of a very busy three days’ conference”. The Labour chairman referred instead to a previous motion in which representatives of “all parts of the labour movement of this country” voted to support the speaker’s conference scheme.

Cave, in his contribution, noted that AV was “one of the very few questions which did not receive the unanimous decision” of the speaker’s conference. Rather, he said, the decision taken was divided on party lines.

Speaking in a personal capacity, Cave stated his opposition to AV and called on MPs to agree with the House of Lords in its amendment. The home secretary said he would regret “another cause of difference” with the Lords, arguing that a difference between the houses would “put further obstacles in the way of the speedy conclusion of the deliberations on this bill”.

MPs ultimately supported the motion to disagree with the Lords by 178 votes to 170. By a majority of eight, the commons recommitted itself to the alternative vote – against the wishes of peers and Cave, the minister responsible for the bill.

***

On 4 February, with parliamentary “ping pong” now in full flow, the Lords returned to consider the positions take by the House of Commons on its amendments; the focus was once more on the proposed electoral system.

Selborne, the progenitor of the original PR amendment in the house of peers, proposed a compromise. He called for a more modest “experimental” scheme, applying PR only to boroughs returning three or more members – affecting roughly 141 seats.

Selborne continued to make the argument for a proportional scheme, arguing that the existing system inflicted “a cruel injustice on the agricultural industry.”

He declared: “If I were to say that the affairs of cotton, or of coal, or of iron, ought to be managed by farmers and agricultural labourers, the whole of those great industries would cry out in indignation.

“But that is exactly what has happened to agriculture in this country for the last fifty years.”

He also warned of the consequences of retaining first-past-the-post in Ireland. Under the single-member system, he argued that a narrow nationalist plurality could produce a massive separatist/republican majority.

With 103 Irish MPs, he calculated that only 25 Unionists would be returned from Ulster and Trinity College Dublin, leaving as many as 80 Sinn Féin MPs.

He added: “Now, if you apply proportional representation to Ireland you make the same estimate of Members, and what is the result? In addition to the 21 drawn from the Ulster block and Trinity College, Dublin, you get 25 [constitutional nationalists], friends of amity with the British people, and you have a total of 55 Unionists and friendly non-separatists from Ireland as against 50 Sinn Féiners.”

Selborne stated: “I believe that this question spells all the difference between evolution and revolution.”

The earl’s limited scheme was approved by 86 votes to 35.

The Lords, meanwhile, remained entirely hostile to the alternative vote. The Marquess of Salisbury argued that AV amounted to “clandestine intrigue and arrangement under which false results are produced” – a reference to Lib-Lab collusion.

AV was once again removed from the bill – this time by 66 votes to 29.

At this stage, the position was clear. The Lords refused to accept a bill with AV but no PR; the commons refused to accept a bill with PR but no AV.

In the commons on 5 February, Ryland Adkins proposed an “intermediate course” that would see both the PR and AV schemes trialled in a limited number of constituencies.

He argued that this compromise, though it had “neither the merits nor the defects of logic”, could well save the bill as a whole. Under the proposed package, the commons would accept a PR trial in boroughs with three or more members (112 seats); the Lords would then accept a trial of AV in 103 seats.

Adkins, a member of the original speaker’s conference, stated: “If you apply the alternative vote in this limited form, you would have another great and important experiment tried on a scale large enough to test it, but not on a scale large enough to dominate the electoral fortunes at any election.”

Moreover, under this compromise, no school of thought could claim “absolute victory.”

Once more, Chamberlain led the charge against the latest Lords scheme. He noted the argument made in the Lords recommending “this scheme to the country as our sole protection against revolution.” The senior Conservative MP likened this argument as an attempt to clean the ocean with a mop.

He said: “If the party leaders of this great assembly wish to try and mop up the Atlantic with a mop, let them do it. But why should we be the mop? Why should we be used as the instruments of their ineffectual campaign?”

Chamberlain denigrated the suggestion that this “experiment is to be made on us against our will and without any mandate from any part of the country.”

He argued that the four-member constituency for Birmingham would reduce the city’s political culture to “sterility and impotence”.

Chamberlain proposed an amendment to ensure Birmingham remained under the single-member system, which was approved by 260 votes to 156.

The PR experiment was then stripped from the scheme by 238 votes to 141 – a majority of 97.

Returning to AV, Willoughby Dickinson proposed an amendment that would only apply the scheme to parliamentary boroughs where there were more than two candidates.

Dickinson declared: “This House has once, twice, thrice declared its adhesion to the principle by which the minority is not to be enabled to obtain its candidate in cases where there are more than two candidates.

“I hope that the House will send this back again to the House of Lords in order that they may again be able to give consideration to the wishes of the commons in this very important matter.”

Hemmerde angrily protested that a “non-elective chamber” would seek to “deprive us of a system that is in use throughout the world”.

He went on to accuse the House of Lords of being a mere tool for the Unionist/Conservative position, which benefited from splits in the Lib-Lab (non-Tory) vote. He argued that the “Lords in a matter like this does but register the decrees of one party in the state. Everybody knows that to be true!”

Facing persistent heckling, Hemmerde added: “They are arrogating to themselves functions that they have no right to, and the only good feature about the whole thing is that action like this, unblushing and flagrant, will soon sweep away that party which exists merely to register the decrees of the Tory.”

In the end, the commons backed Dickinson’s amendment by 195 votes to 194 – a majority of just one.

***

A final compromise was reached on 6 February 1918, the very last day of the parliamentary session.

The Marquess of Lansdowne recognised the gravity of the situation; he stated that while the bill was “distasteful” for many, it now had to pass.

Lansdowne proposed a tactical retreat. Instead of forcing proportional representation into the bill again, he suggested the creation of a royal commission to prepare a scheme for its future introduction. His amendment provided for a commission to draft, “as soon as may be after the passing of this act” a scheme under which approximately 100 MPs would be elected by PR in constituencies returning three or more members.

Lansdowne further argued that if a commission were appointed, ministers should abandon their neutrality and adopt its report as a “government proposal”.

Earl Curzon, as leader of the House, defended his fellow peers from accusations of obstruction, arguing that the Lords had exercised its “rights on constitutional grounds”.

Turning to Lansdowne’s compromise, Curzon refused to commit the government to accepting a future commission report. However, he said the “government would undertake to put a minister in charge of the measure”, who would be responsible for ensuring “the passage of a good and reasonable measure into law.”

Curzon rejected any attempt to link proportional representation with the alternative vote, such as that proposed by Adkins in the commons. The senior peer said he could not “imagine anything more unfortunate than that there should be any element of bargaining between the cases of proportional representation and the alternative vote”.

Lansdowne’s amendment was agreed without a division. Viscount Galway’s motion to strike the alternative vote from the bill then passed by 74 votes to 33.

When the bill returned to the commons, Cave stated in simple terms the position MPs were now in. The Lords had insisted on removing the alternative vote; as such, there was now a “clear option before the House either to agree with that amendment or to lose the bill”.

The home secretary warned that failure to pass the bill at this stage would imperil Britain’s political stability.

He added: “It is not too much to say that the stability of our constitution hinges, as I believe, upon the early passage of a measure of this kind, and I can conceive no event which could more fitly be described as a real disaster than the failure of this bill, through whatever cause, at the very moment it should find its way to the statute book.”

Willoughby Dickinson responded by moving an amendment to expand the commission’s remit, empowering it also to select 100 single-member constituencies in which to trial the alternative vote.

Senior Labour MP Arthur Henderson, seconding the amendment, expressed astonishment that the House would “look with approval upon a recommendation” that had been rejected by the commons, and which simultaneously rejected “a proposal which has always attained a majority”.

He warned that the loss of the bill would intensify “seething discontent” in industrial Britain.

Henderson declared: “The seething discontent which exists in the great centres of industry will be intensified very considerably, to the danger of the country, in the event of this Bill being lost, and it behaves this House, as it behaves the other House, to reach a compromise which will not only be acceptable to a majority of both Houses, but which will assist in easing the situation from one end of the country to the other.”

The debate then became the scene of a clash between three of the era’s most formidable parliamentarians: Chamberlain, Balfour and Asquith.

Chamberlain denounced the proposal as intolerable, declaring it unjust that “one-seventh of the membership of this House should be selected willy-nilly for an experiment which the other six-sevenths would not have applied to them”.

He added: “I say at once that in my opinion that is the most hateful particular in it, the most invidious, the most unjustifiable, the most illogical”.

He accused the Lords of “trying the House of Commons rather severely” by seeking to decided the mechanics of elections.

The former cabinet minister concluded: “Do not let us have this partial thing; this unfair and invidious selection of particular constituencies. Do not, above all, tell me that this is a compromise. It is not. It is adding insult to injury.”

Balfour, the foreign secretary, responded by mocking Chamberlain’s “white emotion” over what he described as a “relatively innocuous proposal.”

He stated: “I confess I cannot imagine any subject on which [Chamberlain] would express himself more vehemently, and with more sincerity and white emotion, than he has done upon this relatively innocuous proposal.”

He reminded the House that they remained “untrammelled” because the final scheme would still require a fresh vote by the commons.

He stated: “When that time comes the revolutionary House of Lords, to which [Chamberlain] takes such exception, will have no control or power over this House at all…

“If he carries the House with him, then the revolutionary attempts of the House of Lords will be completely frustrated, and nothing they can do will set proportional representation on its legs again so far as the measure now before the House and the measures swinging from it are concerned.”

The Lords amendment, Balfour argued, was an “eminently statesmanlike proposal, moderate in its character, safe in its application, and one which will give an opportunity [to trial PR].”

Asquith mockingly noted that “the position of Birmingham in a future House of Commons, had revived and rekindled [Chamberlain’s] old and native faith.”

He added: “I gather that [Balfour] somewhat shares my surprise.

“They have sat together side by side in intimate political comradeship for years, and my right honourable friend the foreign secretary never till this moment suspected the seething though carefully-restrained reservoir of democratic sentiment that all this time has been kept under such admirable control.”

The former prime minister, however, while stating his support for a limited PR experiment, focused on the fate of the bill. He warned that its failure would be “an immeasurable calamity to the country and to the empire”. As such, Asquith said he was “prepared to make great sacrifices.”

The Liberal leader nonetheless expressed his support for Dickinson’s amendment, stating that he could not see the “reason or the justice, if you are going to adopt a plan with regard to the one [scheme, PR], why you should not adopt it equally with regard to the other [AV].”

The leader of the House, Bonar Law, then brought the debate to a close. He attempted to bring the curtain down on almost two years of debates with a dose of political realism.

Law declared: “I do not believe that the country cares two pence one way or the other about either proportional representation or even the alternative vote, but I do say that the country does care about the passing of this bill.”

Dickinson’s amendment to add AV to the scheme was ultimately rejected by 184 votes to 166 – a majority of 18.

The Lords PR commission clause was then accepted by 224 votes to 114.

The commons thereby abandoned AV, accepted a commission to consider a PR experiment, ended the parliamentary “ping pong”, and – at the eleventh hour – saved the bill.

The only seats which would not be elected under the majoritarian FPTP system were the multi-member university seats; under subsection one of clause 20, they were to be elected by the single transferable vote. This system survived until the Representation of the People Act 1948, passed by Clement Attlee’s Labour government.

The Representation of the People Act, after a year and a half of debate, received royal assent later that day on 6 February 1918.

***

The subsequent royal commission, as provided for in Lansdowne’s amendment, reported within two months of the act’s passage.

On 13 May 1918, MPs debated the commission’s scheme, in effect resuming a discussion that had been adjourned only weeks earlier, on 6 February.

Herbert Fisher, now the president of the Board of Education, moved the resolution to adopt the commissioners’ scheme. In doing so, he paid tribute to the late Leonard Courtney, a long-standing advocate of electoral reform, who had died just as the commission completed its work. Courtney had resigned from Gladstone’s administration in 1884 in protest at the so-called Arlington Street compact, the agreement that cemented political support for the introduction of single-member constituencies.

Fisher said electoral reform appealed to Courtney’s “strong, mathematical intellect, to his unswerving enthusiasm for individual liberty, to his concern for the rights of minorities, which formed part of his general passion for justice.”

Whatever the fate of the resolution, Fisher argued, “the cause which it embodies has gained a dignity, from which time can never detract, by its association with this sincere and courageous figure.”

Fisher framed the scheme as a “modest and limited experiment” involving 99 members across 11 boroughs and six counties.

He stated: “I have always cherished an academic belief – doubtless due to my unfortunate antecedents – in the virtue of a system of proportional representation… as a more exact method of ascertaining the true feeling and judgment of the country.”

Asquith urged the House that the scheme should be treated as an opportunity, declaring: “Should it fail, you can go back to the old system, and if it succeed you can develop and extend it.”

Burdett-Coutts once again led the opposition to the resolution. He argued “that the representation of minorities… is contrary to the interests of parliamentary self-government. It threatens the fundamental law that the majority must govern.”

Austen Chamberlain warned that the complexity of PR would cause a “preposterous and scandalous block” at polling stations, claiming that working men, arriving in the final minutes of the vote, would be disenfranchised by the complexity of ranking 20 or 30 names.

Conservative MP John Pennefather argued that MPs elected under PR would be effectively excluded from ministerial office because the cost of their re-election (necessary for ministerial appointments at the time) would be too high. The scheme, he said, would create a “black list of 100 members” whose political careers would simply stagnate.

Conservative MP Mark Sykes argued that the current system treated voters as mere “ballot-fodder”.

He said: “Just as the Prussian regards mankind as cannon-fodder, so the election agent regards mankind as ballot-fodder.”

“Man is born to vote, and to vote as he is told. Suppose – to raise no invidious distinctions – the colour of an imaginary party is purple. Well, the election agent’s argument is this: ‘Your father voted purple, you have yourself voted purple. Mr Blank is the candidate. He has kissed your baby, shaken your hand subscribed to your place of worship, or subscribed to your place of refreshment.

“‘You will get into this car, go to the polling booth, put your cross opposite his name read nothing, think of nothing, do as I tell you.’”

Sykes said the government whips were “responsible for the subtle propaganda which says proportional representation will fill this House with cranks.”

He stated that a whip’s definition of a crank was “a wealthy man who does not want a knighthood, or an able man who does not want to be an under-secretary.”

He added: “The House, indeed, might be filled with pestilential people like Wilberforce, Cobden, or [Samuel] Plimsoll, who wanted to get something done and not to do somebody else, and if that were so, from that point of view, the thing would be most unsatisfactory.”

E. Pollock, speaking in opposition to the resolution, said he was relieved that his own seat was not among the constituencies selected for the commission’s experimental scheme.

He stated: “I stand here as one of the happy persons who was scheduled and fortunately escaped, although, like Ulysses, I am glad to have escaped death. I grieve for my dear companions who are still in the unhappy position of the 100 seats.”

The House rejected the commission scheme by 166 votes to 110 – a majority of 56.

MPs adopted a resolution which described the proposals as “inadvisable” and “not justified by the nature and extent or the results of the local inquiries held”.

***

The debate on electoral reform dominated much of the passage of the Representation of the People Act; by contrast, the legislation’s transformative expansion of the franchise itself proved relatively uncontentious.

And yet, the effect of the 1918 act was transformative. The 8.5 million newly enfranchised women under clause four of the legislation accounted for 43% of the new electorate.

The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, which received royal assent on 21 November 1918, established the right of women to stand for election to the House of Commons. The legislation was rushed through parliament in the final weeks of the First World War to ensure women could be candidates in the general election scheduled for December 1918.

The act was a legislative corrective to the Representation of the People Act 1918, which did not address the right of women to hold office.

In the end, 17 women stood as candidates in the general election held on 14 December 1918. These included the suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst, who stood for the Women’s Party in Smethwick. She narrowly lost to the Labour candidate, John Davison, by 775 votes. The only woman to win a seat in 1918 was Constance Markievicz, who was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick’s while detained in Holloway Prison. As a member of Sinn Féin, Markievicz adhered to her party’s abstentionist policy and refused to take her seat in Westminster. Instead, she sat in the First Dáil in Dublin.

The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928, passed by Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government, granted the vote to all women over the age of 21 across all elections (municipal and parliamentary).

The 1928 act, sometimes referred to as the Fifth Reform Act, added a further five million women to the electoral roll and made women a majority (52.7%) of the electorate for the subsequent general election. There were 14 million women eligible to vote compared with 11.25 million men.