Political Party System
The present party system depends upon the organized political parties. The parties are not registered or formally recognized in law, but in practice most candidates in elections belong to one of the main parties. Parliamentary government based on the party system has been established in Britain over the past 100 years. In the 19th century there was no clear-cut party division in the House of Commons. The terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ to describe certain political leanings had been in use for about 150 years but there was virtually no party organization outside Parliament. The House of Commons did not present opposing parties, but political groups which could only be classified in accordance with their support of or opposition to the King’s government. The reason for this lack of unity lay in the small size of the electorate. The outcome of elections was decided by a small number of influential citizens, and not by the public at large. The first parliamentary Reform Act, in 1832 did not greatly increase the electorate. Female suffrage followed in the twentieth century. The voting age for both men and women was lowered to 18 in 1969. The expansion of the electorate was accompanied by the organization of political parties in the modern sense. Side by side with party organization inside the House of Commons came the development of country-wide party organization outside Parliament – Liberal (formerly called Whig), Conservative (or Tory) and, from the late nineteenth century, Labour (or Socialist).
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