Hello and

assistant editor at Spiked and this week I talked to Brendan O'Neill about the centenary of the

representation of the People Act. Linda Bellos talks to me about campus censorship and Wendy Cameronar looks at the problems with

me too. This week 100 years ago, Parliament passed the representation of the People Act. It granted suffrage to women over 30 who either owned property or had a degree and working class men.

It was some years before all women got the phone, but the 1918 act should be celebrated.

It was a great gain, while in part by the efforts of the suffragettes.

We've had a week of celebration, mainly focusing on women's suffrage with women-only programs and symbolic protests outside

parliament. But there's something niggling us at Spiked about the political class's celebration

of democracy. After all, most of them have spent the last year and a half arguing that a

democratic vote be overturned. Does it stick in your craw that those who so despise the

expression of democracy today are attempting to pay lip service to the

Democratic demands of the suffragettes in 1918. Brendan O'Neill,

Spiked editor, certainly has something to say about it. I caught up with him to

find out more. So Brendan this week is the centenary of the Representation of the People Act.

Are you celebrating that?

I am, yes actually.

I think it was a great leap forward for politics in this country for democratic rights of course for women

some women and for working-class men I think there's a lot to celebrate in it I

think it did represent an important expansion of democracy, not only to women over 30 who owned property or had a degree from a good university, but also more importantly and often has been forgotten in the whole celebration for working class men as well, 5.6 million

of them no less. So that's incredibly important. It brought on board to political decision

making, huge sways of the population who had been shut out and

often violently shut out if you look at the 1800s when men who fought for the right to vote were

...