A Selection of Elections

This exhibition ran between 7 September and 2 December 2018.

The year 2018 marked the centenary of the first UK general election in which some women were entitled to vote.

We celebrated that fact by looking back at some memorable elections and exploring how electioneering has changed over the years.

Before the first Reform Act of 1832, few people could vote and powerful aristocrats could sway the results. Papers from the disputed Cumberland election of 1768 and the Duke of Newcastle’s pocket borough of Aldborough revealed stories of coercion, bribery and corruption.

We discovered the fascinating story of James Morrison, the wealthy M.P. for Nottingham East lauded as ‘the friend of the poor’. We followed the tireless work of Fred Westacott, Communist Party candidate in Mansfield, in the 1960s and 1970s. And we learned about the suffragists and suffragettes who campaigned for equal voting rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.