The Representation of the People Act 1969 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
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 a ‘measured response’ theory.
Legislation
The Representation of the People Act extended suffrage to 18-year-olds, the first major democratic nation to lower its age of franchise to include this age group. Previously, only those aged over 21 were permitted to vote. The first election affected by this change of law was the 1970 Bridgwater by-election held on 13th March 1970 after the death of the sitting MP. The 1970 United Kingdom general election was the first general election in which this Act had effect. Other changes introduced by the Act include requiring ballot papers to show the name of the party as well as the name of the candidate.
In local government elections, the Act abolished plural voting, except in the City of London.
Aftereffects
Case law subsequently established the right for undergraduate students to vote in the constituency of their university. This followed an appeal to the High Court led for the National Union of Students (NUS) by the Junior Common Room student body of Churchill College, Cambridge University under the guidance of Richard Henry Tizard, founding Fellow of Churchill College.
The approach taken by the UK political establishment to the radical challenge of youth culture, 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 and peaked in the early 1970s.
The 1969 Act, sometimes known as the Sixth Reform Act, 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.
See also
Reform Acts
Representation of the People Act
Social history of Postwar Britain (1945–1979)