During the late 19th and early 20th Century, several acts were passed by Parliament in an effort to make Britain more democratic. However, whether Britain was completely democratic by 1914 is an issue for debate. In order to decide how democratic Britain was we must first establish what a democracy is. The nine major factors which make a system democratic involve providing a secret ballot to ensure privacy, holding regular elections to make sure it is the government wanted by the people who are in power. A democratic system has universal suffrage and similarly anyone can stand for election, making sure everyone has their say in who represents them. Persons in charge should be elected representatives of the people and the government should be by majority. Everyone should have freedom of speech and protection in law as basic human rights. These are the factors that constitute a democracy, but how many of these were fulfilled in 1914?

In 1884 the Franchise Act was passed. This meant the voting population was up to six million. It does not bring universal suffrage but two thirds of all males in Britain were now eligible to vote. This was a vast improvement from the ea

However there were still many undemocratic features of the British Parliament. In 1914 no women had the vote; it was not until 1918 that the first women received the vote. In addition one third of males still did not have the vote as the right to vote was still based on property. The men had to either own a house or be paying L10 rent a month and they also had to go through a complex process of registration in order to vote. Many did not meet the requirements and so one third of the male population were excluded from voting. As I mentioned earlier for a country to be classified democratic it must have universal suffrage. When well over half of the population is ineligible to vote a country can certainly not be classified democratic.

Despite constituency boundaries being reformed in the Second Reform Act and the Third Reform Act, there were still problems over where some people could vote. In 1914, seven percent of voters were eligible to vote in more than one constituency, and many were unable to prove that they were eligible to vote anywhere. In the 1884-5 Third Reform Act, the Conservatives under Lord Salisbury redistributed the seats in an effort to gain safe votes at the next election, these practices were highly undemocratic and were not completely resolved by 1914.

A further step towards democracy was taken in 191

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Approximate Word count = 897
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)