Catherine Bochel - The Careers of Councillors: Gender, Party and Politics

The spread of local as well as parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom was founded on the Great Reform Act of 1832. The extension of the franchise from the 1830s created the anomalous situation of a democratic House of Commons at the centre, with a wide variety of older and undemocratic forms of local administration. The pressures for change were felt particularly in the large industrial towns which were now represented in parliament but which frequently had little or no form of democratic local authority. In addition, the ideas of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham were being taken up by political activists who sought to translate theory into practice. In his Constitutional Code (1843) Bentham had argued for a unitary state with a system of sub-national legislatures operating below the national legislature. Benthams supporters (who came to be known as the Philosophic Radicals), including Edwin Chadwick (perhaps most commonly associated with the 1848 Public Health Act, but also involved with the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act), were amongst the most prominent campaigners for reform for direct elections by secret ballots at both national and sub-national levels. Following a Royal Commission the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act was passed, creating municipal corporations, consisting of a mixture of elected councillors and aldermen, who were selected by those councillors, in many towns and cities. In Scotland the equivalent changes had been made two years before, in 1833, again following a Royal Commission. However, in rural areas reform was delayed until the 1888 Local Government Act, which introduced the new county councils and county boroughs, again involving a mixture of elected councillors and nominated aldermen. Elected county councils were created the following year.

Although there was a gradual extension of the franchise at both national and local levels it was not until the 1945 Representation of the People Act that the franchise for local and national elections became identical. Before then the differences had primarily been related to taxation, and specifically the payment of local rates.