Second Reform Act in Britain

The Second Reform Act in Britain, passed in 1867, doubled the electorate and made working-class voters the majority in every urban constituency. It was a result of sustained public pressure rather than a gift from political elites, and formed part of a longer sequence of reforms that broadened participation in British political life.

Pressure for Reform

The Act followed a long campaign to widen political representation. The Chartist movement organized mass demonstrations, while Parliament repeatedly debated further reform. After the Chartists disintegrated following 1848, the National Reform Union, founded in 1864, and the Reform League, founded in 1865, carried the cause forward.

The campaign acquired renewed force in July 1866, when major pro-reform riots in Hyde Park pushed reform to the top of the political agenda. The sequence—from organized demonstrations to street unrest and renewed parliamentary attention—shows how collective action helped make electoral change politically unavoidable.

The 1867 Settlement

The Second Reform Act doubled the total electorate. Its most consequential change was that working-class voters became the majority in all urban constituencies, altering the balance of political participation in the cities. The change did not establish universal suffrage, but it substantially expanded the electorate and brought urban working-class voters into greater political prominence.

The Act was followed shortly afterward by the introduction of the secret ballot and measures against corrupt electoral practices such as treating: the buying of votes with money, food, or alcohol. These reforms addressed not only who could participate, but also the conditions under which votes were cast and obtained.

A Stage in a Longer Transformation

The Act was one step in a broader, gradual development toward more inclusive political institutions. The electorate doubled again under the Third Reform Act of 1884, which enfranchised 60 percent of adult males. After the First World War, the 1918 Representation of the People Act extended the vote to all adult men over twenty-one and to women over thirty who were taxpayers or married to taxpayers; in 1928, women received the vote on the same terms as men.

The progression places the 1867 reform between mass campaigning and later extensions of the franchise. It helped translate organized pressure into institutional change, while the continuing limits on voting rights make clear that widening participation was a process rather than a single completed settlement.