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Representation of the People Act 1969

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Representation of the People Act 1969
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act to amend the law about the qualification of electors at elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom or at local government elections in Great Britain, and the qualification for election to and membership of local authorities in England and Wales, about the conduct of and manner of voting at those elections and about candidates' election expenses thereat, and otherwise to make provision about matters incidental to those elections, and for purposes connected therewith.
Citation1969 c. 15
Dates
Royal assent17 April 1969
Other legislation
Repealed byRepresentation of the People Act 1983
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted

The Representation of the People Act 1969 (c. 15) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that lowered the voting age to 18 years. This statute is sometimes called the Sixth Reform Act.

Background

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Further information: Social history of post-war Britain (1945–1979)

The 1960s were a period of growing political and cultural demands by young people in Britain, as in other Western democracies. The British political establishment developed a uniquely liberal response, described by Arthur Marwick, a British social historian, as "measured judgement".[1][2]

Legislation

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The Representation of the People Act 1969 extended suffrage to 18-year-olds, the first democratic nation to lower its age of franchise to include this age group.[1][3][4] Previously, only those aged over 21 were permitted to vote.

Section 12 of the act allowed candidates to include on the ballot paper, alongside their name, a six-word description including party or other political affiliation. Previously, the "description" mandated by the Ballot Act 1872 was presumed to indicate profession, occupation, or social rank; political descriptions were deprecated, and definitively prohibited by the Representation of the People Act 1948.[5] The 1969 act did not empower returning officers to challenge the accuracy of the description.[6] The provision (restated in 1983) was exploited by spoiler candidates using descriptions confusingly close to those of major parties; notoriously, the Liberal Democrat candidate lost a 1994 Euro election when Richard Huggett took votes running as a "Literal Democrat".[7] The Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 dealt with this problem by creating a register of political parties.[8]

In local government elections, the act abolished plural voting, except in the City of London.[9][10]

Aftereffects

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The first election affected by this change of law was the Bridgwater by-election held on 13 March 1970 after the death of the sitting MP.[11] The next general election was on 18 June 1970.

Case law subsequently established the right for undergraduate students to vote in the constituency of their university.[12] This followed an appeal to the High Court.[13]

The approach to the challenge of radical youth culture taken by the UK political establishment, which primarily involved strategies of co-option and compromise, was able to stymie much of the rising social and political tension that convulsed some other liberal democracies in 1968 through to the early 1970s.[1][2]

The 1969 act, sometimes known as the Sixth Reform Act,[11][14][15] did not extend the right to stand as a candidate for election to Parliament to under-21s. The age of candidacy for elections in the United Kingdom was lowered from 21 to 18 in 2006, with the passing of the Electoral Administration Act 2006.[16]

The Representation of the People Act 1983 was in part a consolidation act which repealed the 1969 act but restated many of its provisions.

See also

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Sources

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  • Gay, Oonagh (1 June 1998). "Registration of Political Parties Bill (Bill 188 1997/98)". House of Commons Library Research Paper (98/62). Retrieved 16 March 2024.

Citations

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  1. ^ a b c Loughran, Thomas; Mycock, Andrew; Tonge, Jonathan (3 April 2021). "A coming of age: how and why the UK became the first democracy to allow votes for 18-year-olds". Contemporary British History. 35 (2): 284–313. doi:10.1080/13619462.2021.1890589. ISSN 1361-9462. S2CID 233956982. Our starting point is placement of the 1969 Act within the context of previous reforms of the age of enfranchisement since the Great Reform Act of 1832.
  2. ^ a b Marwick, Arthur (28 September 2011). The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-4482-0542-4.
  3. ^ Loughran, Thomas; Mycock, Andrew; Tonge, Jonathan (3 November 2021). "Lowering the voting age: three lessons from the 1969 Representation of the People's Act". British Politics and Policy at LSE. Retrieved 31 December 2022. 'Votes at 18' was the last major extension of the UK franchise and is therefore an important element of the history of UK democracy from the 1832 Great Reform Act onwards.
  4. ^ Bingham, Adrian (25 June 2019). "'The last milestone' on the journey to full adult suffrage? 50 years of debates about the voting age". History & Policy. Retrieved 31 December 2022.
  5. ^ Gay 1998 pp. 20–21
  6. ^ Gay 1998 pp. 23–24
  7. ^ Gay 1998 pp. 24, 26, 28
  8. ^ Gay 1998 p. 6
  9. ^ Halsey, Albert Henry (1988). British Social Trends since 1900. Springer. p. 298. ISBN 9781349194667.
  10. ^ Peter Brooke (24 February 1999). "City of London (Ward Elections) Bill". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). United Kingdom: House of Commons. col. 452.
  11. ^ a b "1969 Representation of the People Act". www.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2021. 1969-sixth-reform-act
  12. ^ Stephen D. Fisher & Nick Hillman. "Do students swing elections? Registration, turnout and voting behaviour among full-time students" (PDF). HEPI. p. 4.
  13. ^ Stephen D. Fisher & Nick Hillman. "Do students swing elections? Registration, turnout and voting behaviour among full-time students" (PDF). HEPI. p. 4.
  14. ^ "Members of Parliament Chadderton". www.chadderton-historical-society.org.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2021. Act of 1969 (also known as the Sixth Reform Act)
  15. ^ Kitching, Paula. "Political Reform: Lesson Plan 6: Overview" (PDF). The History of Parliament. p. 3. Create one of the following charts for each of the six Reform Acts
  16. ^ "Electoral Administration Act 2006". www.legislation.gov.uk. gov.uk. 2006. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
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