Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture

Eighteenth-century elections are largely synonymous with corruption and debauchery, epitomised by the infamous 'rotten' and 'pocket' boroughs, and memorably represented by William Hogarth's 'Humours of an Election' series (1755). Certainly only a small proportion of the population could vote. Even fewer could exercise their vote freely. Although general elections were supposed to be held every three, then seven, years, the huge expense of campaigning ensured only a small proportion of constituencies were contested. This was no modern democracy.

Yet parliamentary elections were fundamentally important to all, not only for the selection of MPs, but also in bestowing a sense of power and belonging (even if only temporarily), in helping to form the nation's self-image, and in helping to forge a new constitutionalist tradition. Moreover, we want to show, elections not only affected, but also engaged, a wide section of the population - both those enfranchised and those not. Elections were often accompanied by an explosion of print, sermons, and song; countless ceremonies, assemblies, and entertainments; new modes of dress, decoration, and behaviour. Men and women, adults and children, rich and poor, franchised and unenfranchised, all participated - as consumers, but also as active makers of this unique cultural and political experience.

Our project's fundamental aims are to shine an intense light on these extraordinary moments of participation, ritual, and sometimes carnival, and to consider their consequences and legacies. To do this we will collect new polling data from constituencies across England 1696-1831, working in partnership with local historian groups; subject this data to new kinds of scrutiny using innovative digital tools; and gather the cultural artefacts and practices which constituted people's lived experiences of elections. We will gain new insight into electoral demography, voter behaviour, and how voting patterns changed over time, across regions, and in different types of constituency. And from a combination of archival and creative practice research (the latter designed to reimagine and re-enact important elements of elections now lost) we will gain new understanding of the extent, pervasiveness, and inclusiveness of electoral culture. By placing polling data in its cultural contexts, we will come to understand whether the elements of campaigning - print and processions, banquets and ballads, sashes and sermons - made a difference to political outcomes, or left any significant legacy beyond election time.

So this project is about two things: how people participate in politics, both with and without the vote; and how interventions across a proliferating range of media affect polling behaviour and outcomes. Both remain highly relevant in our own time. Today, many choose not to vote. This is very different from being excluded from the franchise, as was the great majority in the 18th century. But our research will challenge us to think differently about how non-voters may engage with democratic processes - through music, literature, fashion and art, for example, or via broadcast journalism and social media when once it was handbills and the hustings. We will want to ask whether contemporary phenomena such as data analytics and targeted digital communication strategies have counterparts, even origins, in pre-Reform Britain, and what effects, if any, these kinds of interventions have on people's relationship to the demos. Working with our partners, History of Parliament and the IHR, we aim to communicate our findings to audiences well beyond academia, particularly to schools and at a series of events timed (if possible) to accompany the next UK General Election. As well as reshaping our understanding of how elections functioned before parliamentary reform, we intend that this project should usefully inform pressing debates about political communication and political participation today.

A central aim of this project is to increase public knowledge of electoral processes in 18th-century England. In particular, we intend that the project will inform a range of audiences about (a) different ways in which people have been able to engage in elections whether or not they had the vote; and (b) the ways in which elections were (we will argue) composed of numerous small interventions taking many different forms, aimed at engaging public opinion and securing or altering the poll's result. Disseminating the new knowledge the project generates about pre-1832 voter behaviour and electoral culture may not change the way people regard democracy today, still less how (or if) they vote. But our intention is that, working with influential non-HEI organisations (History of Parliament, Institute of Historical Research, and Hansard Trust), our historical research should inform debate about issues that remain current: (a) Does political participation inhere purely in the act of voting or might other forms of engagement be just as significant? And (b) what is the history, and what effects should we anticipate, of sophisticated multi-channel campaigns to draw people into elections, from the handbills and hustings of the 18th century to the broadcast and social media of today?

Collaboration with non-academic partners forms a key element of our methodology. Our aim is not simply to 'employ' volunteer citizen historians to help collect and process data; rather local history groups have been (during the pilot phase), and will continue to be, instrumental in setting the project's agenda and providing guidance on the most useful forms for its outputs. The chief vehicle for this co-production will be the Constituency Panels we will establish for each of our case studies, each including volunteers collaborating with the project and, where possible, representatives from local archives. The support of our partners the Institute for Historical Research will be invaluable here, since they have huge experience in recruiting and working with community historians, for instance through networks associated with the Victoria County History, as well as a substantial reach through their social media channels.

We see local historians also as key (non-HEI) beneficiaries of the research. By the end of the project, many local historians will have received specialised training, and will be empowered to continue and expand the project after its funding comes to an end. Other channels through which we will transmit our research, and debate its implications, to non-academic audiences are set out in our full Pathways to Impact document. They include a substantial and imaginative programme of public engagement events, based in each of our twelve case study constituencies, and provisionally timed to coincide with the next UK General Election (although we appreciate that the present political situation may lead to an election much sooner); a major public lecture; high-profile public launch event, potentially at the Speaker's House (facilitated by History of Parliament); and posts on the Hansard Society's respected and widely-read 'Despatch Box' blog. The element of our project with the widest potential impact is our work aimed at schools. Drawing on successful models already developed and deployed by the project team, we will develop a Learning Framework for use with Key Stage 3 pupils that fits with the requirements of the National Curriculum, supporting teachers in their delivery of mandated/recommended elements of the Citizenship and History programmes. This has the potential to reach very many young people. It will also bring significant benefits to History of Parliament, through whose website the packages will be made available. Their remit is to engage new audiences, ideally including children, with the history of democratic process, and, to an extent, the continuation of their public funding is dependent on fulfilling this objective.