Electoral reform, politics and the Ascott Martyrs

Abstract

‘The franchise must be extended to households and individual men, so that they could be eligible to vote and represent the needs of labourers in Parliament’
– Christopher Holloway, NALU Oxfordshire activist, 1873
The essay outlines the growth of voters in Ascott in successive electoral reform acts in 1867, 1872,1884 and 1918. Although in 1884 rural poor men received the vote, including the Ascott strikers, the survivors of the female Ascott Martyrs did not become enfranchised until after the First World War.After 1884 Ascott farmworkers probably followed the Liberalism of Joseph Arch, but by 1922 the Conservative landed patriarchy re-asserted itself.