ABSTRACT
The Third Reform Act of 1884 and the Redistribution Act of the following year were a response to the inequality in the electoral system left by Disraeli’s 1867 Act. Taken together, these measures extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, and essentially established the modern one-member constituency as the normal pattern for parliamentary representation. The Franchise Bill certainly extended the vote, but it was still a household-based suffrage, which excluded many of the working classes. Yet by the 1880s the working classes were rapidly becoming more politically active than they had been since the heyday of Chartism. The 1880s were simply too early for the various Labour groups to be able to exercise the pressure that would be necessary to get a democratic franchise out of a government which had no intention of granting one.
