Getting the world to listen to you

Fighting for the right to vote

If you don’t have a say in how your country is run, then it will be more difficult to get what you need. The people in power will make sure everything is about what they want. They’ll get all the money. They will say who can do what. They’ll pass laws to keep it that way. However, empowered you are in yourself, what you can do will still be limited.

For most of British history hardly anyone had a say in Parliament. Ordinary men and women had to campaign hard to be allowed to vote. Partly because they had no vote there was also huge differences in how much money the rich had compared to the poor.

After years of campaigns however by people like the Chartists and the Suffragettes, more and more men and women got the vote. To begin with it was just better off people. Now however everyone has the vote, even some 16 year olds.

• 1831: Only 4,500 men can vote in parliamentary elections. This is out of a population of more than 2.6 million people.
• 1832: About 20% of men get the vote.
• 1867: The number of men allowed to vote doubles.
• 1884: About 60% of men can now vote.
• 1918: Most men over 21 and some women over the age of 30 are given the right to vote.
• 1928: Women over 21 get the right to vote.
• 1969: Women and men over 18 get the vote.
• 2015: 16 year olds can vote in Scottish Parliament elections.

Voting only empowers you in a very small way. After all your vote is only one among millions. However over time more people having the vote has totally changed Britain. For example, Parliament has created the NHS, a school system for everyone and made gay relationships legal. This has been very empowering for lots of people.

Changing things for the better

These things didn’t happen just because of the government. Political parties and pressure groups often had to argue for them first for something to happen.

Sometimes too, change isn’t just about changing the law. It might be about changing how people see you as a woman or black person. It can be about asking all of us to live our lives differently to save the planet we live on. Think of some of issues that people think are important today:

• The #MeToo movement started in 2013 to protest against sexual harassment and attacks on women.
• Black Lives Matter began in America in 2013. It is a part of the longer history against racism that includes the ending of slavery and the equal rights movements of the 1960s.
• Climate change activists like Greta Thunberg work to stop global warming.

Then there are also plenty of campaigns around mental health issues. See for example the work Mind is doing: Mind campaigns

Campaigning to get votes for more people also shows that working together we can successfully empower ourselves.