Are we about to see the greatest voter disenfranchisement in British history?
In most democracies, voting rights were not freely given to all adults but had to be fought for over centuries. People around the world think Britain has an long-established democracy but, as Antonia Fraser set out so brilliantly in her book “Perilous Question: The Drama Of The Great Reform Bill 1832” [my review here], before the Act only around 400,000 out of a total population of 16 million – a mere 3% – had the vote (all male and all requiring a property qualification) and passing the Bill – which provided a modest extension to the franchise – took years and caused a constitutional crisis.
Once citizens have the vote, that’s not the end of the story. Often reactionary forces try to take it away or make it hard to be exercised. Currently in the UK there is a move by the Conservative Government to change the way that voters are registered that could disenfranchise almost 2 million voters. Ros Wynne-Jones states:
“With an estimated eight million people already missing from a shockingly incomplete electoral register, this would bring the total number of disenfranchised voters to almost 10 million.
In other words, in the year of the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which enshrined the roots of British democracy, the Government stands to preside over the biggest disenfranchisement ever seen in our nation’s history.”
You can read more about the threat in her article.