The Representation of the People Act 1918 was an Act of Parliament passed to reform the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland. It is sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act. The Act extended the franchise in parliamentary elections, also known as the right to vote, to men aged over 21, whether or not they owned property, and to women aged over 30 who resided in the constituency whilst occupying land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands did. At the same time, it extended the local government franchise to include women aged over 30 on the same terms as men.  It came into effect at the 1918 general election.

As a result of the Act, the male electorate was extended by 5.2 million to 12.9 million. The female electorate was 8.5 million. The Act also created new electoral arrangements, including making residence in a specific constituency the basis of the right to vote, institutionalising the first-past-the-post method of election, and rejecting proportional representation, although this failed by only seven votes in the Commons during the Act's progress.

It was not until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 that women gained electoral equality. The 1928 Act gave the vote to all women aged over 21, regardless of any property qualification, which added another five million women to the electorate.

Background
After the Third Reform Act in 1884, 60% of male householders over the age of 21 had the vote. This left 40% who did not – including the poorest in society. Thus millions of soldiers returning from World War I would still not have been entitled to vote in the long overdue general election. (The last election had been in December 1910. An election had been scheduled for 1915, but was postponed to a time after the war.)

The issue of a female right to vote first gathered momentum during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1865, the Kensington Society, a discussion group for middle-class women who were barred from higher education, met at the home of Indian scholar Charlotte Manning in Kensington. Following a discussion on suffrage, a small informal committee was formed to draft a petition and gather signatures, led by women including Barbara Bodichon, Emily Davies, and Elizabeth Garrett. In 1869, John Stuart Mill, published The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869), one of the earliest works on this subject by a male author. In the book, Mill attempts to make a case for perfect equality. He talks about the role of women in marriage and how it needed to be changed, and comments on three major facets of women's lives that he felt were hindering them: society and gender construction, education, and marriage. He argued that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity. He agreed to present a petition to Parliament, provided it had at least 100 signatures, and the first version was drafted by his step-daughter, Helen Taylor.

The Suffragettes and Suffragists had pushed for their right to be represented prior to the war, but felt too little had changed, despite violent agitation by the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst and the Women's Social and Political Union.

The suffragist Millicent Fawcett suggested that the women's right to vote issue was the main reason for the Speaker's Conference in 1917. She was frustrated by the resultant age limit, though recognising that there were one and a half million more women than men in the country at the time (due to the loss of life in the First World War), accepted that this would not have wide, cross-party support; many of those in favour of suffrage at the Speaker's Conference still wanted to maintain a male majority. Recalling Disraeli's quip, she noted that Britain "is governed not by logic, but by Parliament".

The debates in both Houses of Parliament saw majority cross-party unanimity. The Home Secretary, George Cave (Con) within the governing coalition introduced the Act:

Terms of the Act

The Representation of the People Act 1918 widened suffrage by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers. However, women were still not politically equal to men (who could vote from the age of 21 if they were willing to serve British rule); full electoral equality was achieved in Ireland in 1922, but did not occur in Britain until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.

The terms of the Act were:
 All men over 21 gained the vote in the constituency where they were resident. Men who had turned 19 during service in connection with World War I could also vote even if they were under 21, although there was some confusion over whether they could do so after being discharged from service. The Representation of the People Act 1920 clarified this in the affirmative, albeit after the 1918 general election.
 Women over 30 years old received the vote if they were registered property occupiers (or married to a registered property occupier) of land or premises with a rateable value greater than £5 or of a dwelling-house and not subject to any legal incapacity, or were graduates voting in a university constituency.
 Some seats were redistributed to industrial towns. Seats in Ireland were amended separately, by the Redistribution of Seats (Ireland) Act 1918.
 All polls for an election to be held on a specified date, rather than over several days in different constituencies as previously.

The Act added 8.4 million women to the electorate as well as 5.6 million men. It was therefore the greatest of all the UK Reform Acts in terms of electorate addition.

The costs incurred by returning officers were for the first time to be paid by the Treasury. Prior to the 1918 general election, the administrative costs were passed on to the candidates to pay in addition to their expenses.

Political changes
The size of the electorate tripled from the 7.7 million who had been entitled to vote in 1912 to 21.4 million by the end of 1918.  Women now accounted for about 39.64% of the electorate. Had women been enfranchised based upon the same requirements as men, they would have been in the majority because of the loss of men in the war.

The age of 30 was chosen because it was all that was politically possible at the time. Any attempt to make it lower would have failed.

As Lord Robert Cecil explained shortly after the Act was passed:

In addition to the suffrage changes, the Act also instituted the present system of holding all voting in a general election on one day, as opposed to being staggered over a period of weeks (although the polling itself would only take place on a single day in each constituency), and brought in the annual electoral register.

Votes
The bill for the Representation of the People Act was passed by a majority of 385 to 55 in the House of Commons on 19 June 1917. The bill still had to pass through the House of Lords, but Lord Curzon, the president of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage did not want to clash with the Commons and so did not oppose the bill. Many other opponents of the Bill in the Lords lost heart when he refused to act as their spokesman. The bill passed by 134 to 71 votes.

Aftermath
The first election held under the new system was the 1918 general election. Polling took place on 14 December 1918, but vote-counting did not start until 29 December 1918.

After this Act gave about 8.4 million women the vote, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed in November 1918, allowing women to be elected to Parliament. Several women stood for election to the House of Commons in 1918, but only one, the Sinn Féin candidate for Dublin St. Patrick's, Constance Markievicz, was elected; however she followed her party's abstentionist policy and did not take her seat at Westminster and instead sat in the Dáil Éireann (the First Dáil) in Dublin. The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was Nancy Astor on 1 December 1919, who was elected as a Coalition Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton on 28 November 1919.

As Members of Parliament, women also gained the right to become government ministers. The first woman cabinet minister and Privy Council member was the Labour Party's Margaret Bondfield, Minister of Labour from 1929 to 1931.

Although the Representation of the People Act extended the franchise significantly, it did not create a complete system of one person, one vote. Seven percent of the population enjoyed a plural vote in the 1918 election, mostly middle-class men who had an extra vote due to a university constituency (this Act increased the university vote by creating the Combined English Universities seats) or by occupying business premises in other constituencies.

See also
 Electoral reform in the United Kingdom
 Parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom 1885–1918
 Reform Acts
 Representation of the People Act
 Suffragette bombing and arson campaign
 Timeline of women's suffrage
 Women in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom
 Women in the House of Lords
 Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

References

Sources

Citations

Further reading
 The text of the act.
 Image of Act on the Parliamentary website.

United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1918
Representation of the People Acts
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
1918 in women's history
February 1918 events
1918 in British politics
1918년 국민대표법() 또는 1918년 선거법 개정()은 영국의 선거 제도를 개혁한 영국의 의회법이다. 이 선거법 개정을 계기로 영국에서 21세 이상의 모든 남성은 투표권을 가지게 되었다. 여성의 경우는 본인 혹은 남편이 5파운드 이상의 토지를 점유하면서 선거구에 거주해야 하며 나이는 30세가 넘어야 투표권이 인정됐다. 다만 지방선거의 경우는 재산에 대한 제한이 없어 30세 이상이면 모두 투표권이 부여되었다. 여성에게 보통선거권이 인정된 것은 10년이 지난 뒤의 일이다. 선거법 개정 직후 시행된 1918년 영국 총선 당시 남성 유권자 수는 520만 명에서 1,290만 명으로 늘어났으며 여성 유권자 수는 850만 명이었다.

이 법은 본래 거주하는 지역의 선거구에서 투표할 것, 단순 소선거구제의 법제화, 비례대표제의 명시적 반대 등 새로운 선거 제도를 규정하고자 했으나 7표 차이로 하원에서 부결됐다.

배경 
1884년 선거법 개정 이후 영국에서 21세 이상 남성 세대주의 60%가 투표권을 가지게 되었다. 하지만 여전히 가장 가난한 사람들을 포함한 40%는 투표권을 행사하지 못했고 이는 제1차 세계 대전에서 돌아온 수백만 명의 군인들이 투표권을 얻지 못한다는 것을 의미했다. 당시 영국은 1910년 영국 총선 이후 1915년에 총선을 진행해야 했지만 전쟁의 여파로 연기되었기 때문에 전쟁이 끝나면 총선을 시급히 시행해야만 했다.

한편 여성의 투표권은 1884년 이후로도 여전히 인정되지 못하고 있었다. 1865년 켄징턴에 있는 인도 학자 샬럿 매닝의 집에서 바버라 보디숀, 에밀리 데이비스, 엘리자베스 가렛 앤더슨 등의 여성들이 모여 비공식 위원회가 결성됐다. 이들은 청원서의 초안을 만들고 서명을 모으는 활동을 했다. 1896년 존 스튜어트 밀은 남성으로서는 드물게 여성 문제에 관한 책을 출판했다. 밀은 책을 통해 결혼에서 여성의 역할이 어떻게 바뀌어야 하는지를 이야기했으며 여성의 삶의 세 가지 중요한 측면인 성 구성, 교육, 결혼에 관한 것을 풀어나갔다. 또한 밀은 여성을 억압하는 것이 인류의 진보를 심각하게 방해하는 편견으로 고대 사회의 몇 안 되는 유물이라고 주장했다.

여성선거권론자들은 전쟁 전부터 여성의 대표권을 주장했지만 에멀린 팽크허스트와 여성사회정치연합의 폭력적인 선동에도 불구하고 큰 변화는 없었다.

1917년 밀리센트 포셋은 여성의 선거권 문제가 주요 의제라고 주장했다. 그는 전쟁의 여파로 영국에 남성보다 여성이 150만 명이나 더 많지만 남성과 달리 여성은 선거에 있어서 연령 제한을 적용받고 있다는 사실에 좌절했다. 포셋은 영국은 논리가 아니라 의회의 통치를 받는다는 벤저민 디즈레일리의 말을 상기했다.

의회는 만장일치로 여성의 투표권을 인정하는 법률을 만들기로 합의했고 내무장관 제1대 케이브 자작 조지 케이브가 법률안을 제의했다. 1917년 6월 19일 하원은 385 대 55로 무난하게 통과했지만 상원에서 어떻게 될지 장담할 수 없었다. 제1대 커즌 오브 케들스턴 후작 조지 커즌은 전국여성참전권반대연맹 회장이었지만 하원과 충돌하길 원치 않았고 그래서 여성에게 선거권을 부여하는 법률안에도 반대하지 않았다. 여성투표권에 반대하는 상원의원들은 커즌이 법률안 반대를 위한 대변인 역할을 해줄 것을 기대했지만 커즌이 그 역할을 떠맡길 사실상 거부하자 더 이상 반대하지 않았고 상원에서도 134 대 71로 통과될 수 있었다.

법률의 내용 
남성의 재산 자격을 모두 폐지하고 21세 이상이면 투표권을 부여하기로 했다. 여성의 경우 최소 재산 자격을 도입하여 30세 이상이면 투표권을 부여하기로 했다. 전쟁 동안 여성의 기여가 인정되어 투표권이 인정받은 건 고무할 만한 것이었지만 여전히 남성과의 차별이 존재했다. 1922년 아일랜드가 선거에서 남녀간의 평등을 이룩했지만 영국은 1928년에 가서야 이것이 이루어졌고 1918년 선거법 개정에도 불구하고 영국에서 남성과 여성은 정치적으로 동등하지 못한 채로 남았다.

21세 이상 남성은 자신이 거주하는 선거구에서 투표권을 행사할 수 있었다. 제1차 세계 대전에 참여하기 위해 복무하고 있는 19세가 된 남성이 전역 후에 투표권을 가지는지에 대한 문제가 제기되었지만 인정하기로 결정됐다. 30세 이상 여성은 본인 혹은 배우자가 5파운드를 초과하는 토지나 건물을 가지고 있으면 거주하는 선거구에서 투표권을 행사할 수 있었으며 대학 졸업생은 대학 선거구에서 투표할 수 있었다.

정치적 변화 
유권자 수는 1912년 770만 명에서 1918년 말 2,140만 명으로 3배 가까이 증가했다. 전체 유권자 수에서 여성이 차지하는 비율은 39.64%였다. 전쟁의 영향으로 남성보다 여성의 수가 더 많았기에 기득권층은 이를 우려하여 아무런 근거도 없이 여성에 한해 연령 제한을 도입했다. 제1대 세실오브첼우드 자작 로버트 세실이 인정했듯이 25살의 여성이 35살의 여성보다 투표를 할 능력이 부족하다고 생각하는 사람은 한 명도 없었다.

또한 1918년 선거법 개정을 통해 모든 선거는 하루만 시행하도록 했다.

여파 
1918년 선거법 개정은 여성의 선거권뿐 아니라 피선거권도 인정했다. 이 선거법에 따라 처음 시행된 1918년 영국 총선에서 840만 명의 여성들이 투표권을 행사했으며 몇몇 여성은 직접 선거에 뛰어들었다. 하지만 당선된 것은 콘스턴스 마르키에비치 한 명뿐이었다. 하지만 그는 당의 규정에 따라 웨스트민스터가 아니라 더블린에서 의석을 차지했다.

여성들은 피선권뿐 아니라 내각의 각료가 될 권리도 얻었는데 최초로 여성 각료가 된 사람은 노동당의 마가렛 본드필드였다. 그는 1929년부터 1931년까지 노동부 장관직을 역임했다.

한계점도 있었는데 이 선거법하에서도 여전히 영국 시민들은 동등한 한 표의 권리를 가지지 못했다. 1918년 총선에서도 전체 유권자의 7%가 복수 투표를 했는데 이들의 대부분은 지역 선거구와 대학 선거구에서 모두 투표권을 행사했던 중산층 남성들이었다.

같이 보기 
 영국의 선거법 개정

1918년 법
영국 의회 법
영국의 선거법
1918년 여성사
1918년 2월