Claim 03cf4f7fChecked 21 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“There was not full emancipation.”
Reasoning & Evidence21 Jul 2026
The claim that "there was not full emancipation" after the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 is correct. After the constitutional settlement, voting rights were extremely restricted: in counties, the franchise was limited to 40-shilling freeholders (property worth at least £2/year), while boroughs had a patchwork of restrictive franchises (corporation, burgage, freeman, and scot-and-lot boroughs with various property-based qualifications). Women were universally excluded from voting, and Catholics were barred from voting, sitting in Parliament, or holding office for over a century. The total English and Welsh electorate in 1689 was roughly 200,000 out of a population of about 5 million. Universal suffrage was not achieved until the Representation of the People Acts of the early 20th century (1918 for most men and some women, 1928 for all women). The Bill of Rights (1689) established parliamentary supremacy and free elections but did not create a democratic system. Farage's concession is thus a correct and uncontroversial historical observation.
Sources: History of Parliament Online, "Appendix IX: Franchises and Contested Elections" (https://historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/survey/appendix-ix-franchises-and-contested-elections); House of Commons Library, "The History of the Parliamentary Franchise" (https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/rp13-14/); ECPPEC, "Electorates and Turnout" (https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk/features/electorates-and-voter-turnout/); History Crunch, "Glorious Revolution of 1688: A Detailed Summary" (https://historycrunch.com/glorious-revolution-of-1688/)
From article
Well, I’m Cavalier by instinct and by lifestyle. I mean, I don’t like Roundheads. You know, you can be Christian and fun or you can be Christian and, like Cromwell, be deeply puritanical and want to control everybody. So, yes, the Civil War is terribly important but I accept that there is a minor conflict in my mind on it.
Ultimately, the importance of the Civil War and the republic and what happened in the 1680s is that we put together, I think, a constitutional settlement as good as anything in the world, really. We had a system of government that we all understood. We all understood. OK, there wasn’t full emancipation, but from then on general elections really mattered. And my argument is that since [Britain joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the European Union, in] 19732The year that Edward Heath’s government took Britain into what was then the European Economic Community that has gradually been diminishing, to the point now where it doesn’t really make any difference who’s in No 10. I mean, it doesn’t matter to the City any more whether it’s Tory or Labour.
Sources opened