Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

The age of (democratic) CONSENT TobyMarshall considers whether lowering the voting age to 16 might engage young people in politics – and if so, what the implications of that might be... A head of the 2024 General Election, the Labour Party manifesto stated that, “We will increase the engagement of young people in our vibrant democracy, by giving 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote in all elections.” At the time of writing, we don’t yet know if the Labour Party will be true to its word, and if so, how the country’s 16- and 17-year-olds will intend to use their vote. But either way, I believe that schools should be sharing Britain’s suffrage story to date with our future voters, up to the age of 16, through the teaching of history. Our national suffrage story The Office for National Statistics estimates that the UK population is just shy of 68 million – 49 million of whomwere registered to vote in 2023. The ONS further calculates that in April of this year, there were approximately 1,602,000 16- to 17-year-olds living in the UK. When HaroldWilson’s Labour government lowered the voting age to 18 in 1969, it was seen as ushering in an important new chapter of our national suffrage story. More recently, younger Scots have been allowed to participate in local votes, including the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. Yet both sets of changes generated mixed results in terms of youth engagement, with the changes in Scotland appearing to have done little to transformScotland’s overall electoral culture. That’s what the turnout at this year’s General Election seems to suggest, being lower in Scotland (59%) than it was in the UK as whole (60%). Previous chapters in Britain’s suffrage story have been considerably more dramatic and transformative, because they had greater democratic meaning. Awhiff of paternalism The full, unrestricted, franchise first came to all males in 1918, following prior campaigning work by the Chartists from the 1830s until the 1860s. The franchise was then extended to women in 1928, after the similarly commendable actions of the Suffragettes, who picked up the suffrage baton after the initial Chartist campaigns died down. Young adults then finally got the vote in the 60s – but as many historians of that decade have observed, this was different to prior extensions of the franchise, in that it wasn’t granted in response to popular demand. It’s said that the decision was instead driven by elite concerns over the radical activities of the ‘69ers, as well as a perceived crisis of parliamentary legitimacy. Similarly, young people today aren’t exactly calling for the vote in huge, unprecedented numbers, which is why Labour’s latest voting proposal has more than a whiff of paternalism about it. Labour seems to want young people to become more politically engaged – just as any good teacher or parent would – but adult politics, at least as I understand it, is about representing the needs of adults ; not teaching people how to grow up. Power struggles Neither the Chartists nor the Suffragettes were seeking a political education. Rather, they were engaged in a power struggle against those that were oppressing them. Bothmass movements had their firebrand figureheads and their moderates. At the firebrand end, the suffragettes had the Manchester-born, East London radical Sylvia Pankhurst, who was arrested onmultiple occasions, went on hunger strike for the cause and was later carried into Parliament by her supporters once they succeeded in getting the law changed. The Chartists had Fergus O’Connor – a Cork-born Irishman who, by many accounts, towered above his peers, bothmorally and physically. His song, ‘The Lion of Freedom’, was often sung in the pubs of England and ends with the following couplet: “We’ll hail our caged lion, now freed from his den, We’ll rally around him, again and again.” Fast forward to now, and I’d argue that there’s no comparable popular movement for youth votes at 16 and 17 today, and certainly no youth leaders anywhere close to Pankhurst or “Youngmenof18command tankscosting£200,000.They areoldenoughtobekilled, oldenoughtobreed,and I thinktheyshouldbeold enoughtovote–but I donot thinkthatnecessarily meanstheyaregoingtouse thatvote.” – Viscount Monckton, responding in the Lords to Labour’s 1969 Representation of the People Act, which lowered the age of voting in the UK from 21 to 18 12 teachwire.net/secondary