To mark the anniversary of the introduction of the Corrupt Practices Act 1883, Dr Kathryn Rix, Deputy Editor of the House of Commons from 1832 to 1945, begins a series of blog posts on this ground-breaking reform. She discusses the key changes the Act brought about and the motivations behind them.

On 25 August 1883, the last day of the parliamentary session, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act received Royal Assent. This ground-breaking legislation, designed to tackle the corruption and expense that had continued to be a prominent feature of parliamentary contests in the 19th century, changed the conditions under which elections were held. For the first time, limits were placed on how much candidates could spend on their campaign, with the amount determined by the type and size of the constituency. Penalties for corrupt practices such as bribery, grooming (providing food and drink), intimidation (the use of intimidation or coercion) and impersonation (impersonating another voter) were increased. It also created a new category of illegal practices, including illegal employment and illegal payment. Payments for transporting voters to the polls, on which candidates in the 1880 general election had spent £273,000 (the equivalent of over £18,000,000 today), were banned. In addition, the number of paid election workers and committee rooms was strictly limited.

It was the events of 1880 that made tackling electoral corruption a priority. Gladstone’s famous ‘Midlothian campaign’ during this election used platform speeches and the press to appeal to voters through reason and opinion. However, the election petitions that flooded in from many constituencies after the contest showed that many voters were still under the influence of bribery and beer. Disappointing hopes that electoral morale would improve, the 1880 election was followed by the third highest number of successful petitions since 1832, with 18 MPs impeached on corruption charges. Before the end of the year, four more MPs had been impeached following petitions after by-elections, and eight Royal Commissions – the highest number ever – were appointed to investigate the worst allegations of corruption. Contemporary concerns were heightened by the strong suspicion that the number of successful petitions represented only the tip of the iceberg, with The Times suggesting that for every constituency exposed as corrupt, there was another.

The Royal Commission’s reports confirmed the scale of the problem, identifying 9,000 individuals guilty of corrupt practices in the eight constituencies they investigated. This electoral immorality could not simply be attributed to the venality of poorer voters, since, as one observer noted, ‘we find magistrates, mayors, aldermen and councillors, professionals, merchants and manufacturers huddled together in this swamp of corruption’. While Gladstone had blamed the Liberals’ defeat in the 1874 election on a Conservative ‘deluge of beer and gin’, the investigations that followed the 1880 election showed that both parties were complicit in corruption, with 14 Liberals – including a minister – and eight Conservatives losing their seats. One of the worst constituencies was Gloucester, where over a third of voters were found guilty of corrupt practices and a local councillor had personally handed out £1,382 in bribes. The existing legislation against corrupt practices, passed in 1854, was clearly inadequate. The Ballot Act of 1872 had helped to combat intimidation, but its effects on bribery were less clear.

When the Liberal government introduced the Corrupt Practices Bill on 7 January 1881, the Attorney-General, Sir Henry James, stated that ‘we have sat long enough on the bench; but the tide of corruption flows on, and it seems vain to hope that it will cease to flow unless something is done to stop it’. Although the measure had the support of the Conservative front bench and of MPs generally, the pressure on parliamentary time – partly caused by the obstructionist tactics of Irish MPs – meant that it did not progress. When the Bill was reintroduced in 1882, The Times noted that ‘the constituencies take but a lukewarm interest in it … the scandalous revelations of electoral commissions are soon forgotten’. However, MPs continued to show a keen interest in reform, another factor which prolonged the debates, since the holding of elections was a subject on which every member of the House of Commons could speak from experience. The Bill was debated in committee for 23 nights when it was brought forward for the third time in 1883, and was finally passed that session after being given precedence over other government measures.

The careful attention paid by MPs to the details of the Bill was partly due to their awareness of how much the measure would affect them personally, particularly the strict rules and severe penalties for breaking the law. While there was clearly an element of self-interest in it, there were genuine concerns that if the law was too draconian it would create public sympathy for those convicted. James did make some concessions in this regard, such as reducing the penalty for treatment from his proposed two years’ imprisonment with hard labour (or a fine of £500) to one year with hard labour (or a fine of £200). MPs also feared that some restrictions on election expenses could hamper participation in elections, in particular the ban on payments for voters’ transport to the polls, which was felt to have a negative impact on elderly and infirm voters, voters in remote areas of Scotland and working-class voters, who might find it harder to vote early during their dinner hour.

There was, however, much to be welcomed by MPs when it came to the introduction of election spending limits. Although a small number of candidates in 1880 (and before) had taken a stand against excessive spending, it was difficult for MPs to resist the pressure from their supporters and voters to open their pockets at elections. The total declared expenditure by candidates in the 1880 election was £1,737,300 – some £750,000 more than in 1874 – and the actual amount spent was estimated at somewhere between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000. The Times was not alone in arguing that ‘no election which sweeps away a fortune in legitimate expenditure can be called free and independent’. Much of this expenditure – such as the £2,000 spent on flags and banners in Sandwich – was unnecessary and was simply done to ‘get the candidate’s money into circulation among the electorate’. A particular problem in 1880 was the use of ‘multitudes of clerks who wrote nothing and messengers who never carried messages except from one public-house to another’, who were in effect bribed on the pretext of doing election work.

James considered this lavish expenditure ‘so near to corruption that it was almost the father of corruption’. Curbing it was fundamental to the 1883 Act, which gave MPs the opportunity to renounce the corruption and expenditure in which many of them had previously been complicit, voluntarily or involuntarily. The expected extension of the franchise before the next general election, which would increase the cost of elections as the electorate grew, made it all the more important to address this problem.

By the time of the next general election in 1885, the conditions of the election campaign had been completely transformed by three major reforms: the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883; the extension of the franchise to the counties in 1884; and the redistribution of seats into mainly single-seat constituencies in 1885. The 1883 Act certainly succeeded in reducing candidates’ election expenditure: total expenditure in the 1885 election was £1,026,646, over £700,000 less than in 1880. The average cost per vote fell by three-quarters, from 18S. 9D. in 1880 to 4S. 5D. in 1885. Only three election petitions succeeded in 1885 on the grounds of corrupt or illegal practices, with four MPs being impeached. However, as in 1880, election petitions alone did not necessarily reveal the full extent of electoral malpractice. The extent to which the 1883 Act achieved its aim of tackling corruption will be the subject of another blog.

KR

Read more:

C. O’Leary, The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections, 1868-1911 (1962)

Kathryn Rix, ‘“The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections”? Reassessing the Impact of the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883’, English historical overviewcxxxiii (2008), 65-97