Political Order and Political Decay (98 page)

BOOK: Political Order and Political Decay

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18
. The 1832 Reform eliminated many of the rotten boroughs, which returned Conservative MPs despite the fact that they had no inhabitants. The 1867 Reform extended the franchise to most urban male householders, which included about 40 percent of the total population. The 1884 Reform Act extended the same voting rights to rural areas and increased participation to about 60 percent of the male population. Further reforms in 1918 and 1929 finally gave the vote to all adult males, and then to women as well. Under these conditions, a truly popular politics could emerge, permitting the rise of the British Labour Party and its displacement of the Liberals as the alternative to the Tories. Each of these Reform Bills engendered huge public controversy, in which the pros and cons of democracy were actively debated. For a general account of these reforms, see Asa Briggs,
The Age of Improvement
,
1783â1867
(New York: Longman, 1959), chaps. 5 and 10.