Compare these sources as evidence for differing views on the benefits of the Liberal government

The authorship of source is the Liberal Party who in May 1911 were in a period of transition from Gladstonian Liberal views of laissez-faire to the New Liberal views of state intervention, however it has weakness due to it clearly not being representative of the whole party as there were still many Gladstonian Liberal who were not committed to welfare reforms, it was mainly just Lloyd George and Churchill who were pursuing social reform. In contrast source D is written by Beatrice Webb, a leading thinker in the Fabian society, a gradualist organisation which believed in taking patient steps and confrontation to defeat capitalism. The authorship of this source brings it strength because Beatrice Webb was middle class female and so would have not lived in an area with no poverty, thus she should be in a good position to judge the extent to which the Liberal reforms needed to go in order to eradicate poverty. However this source isn’t representative, meaning Webb’s views aren’t necessarily shared by the rest of the Fabian society, or the Labour party, who may have had different views on the National Health Insurance Act of 1911.

The nature of source C is a poster issued by the Liberal party for public consumption. This limits the sources utility due to the purpose of the source being to persuade, and so it is likely to exaggerate the benefits of the National Health Insurance Act to try and gain support. Source D also has weaknesses due to its nature. Source D is a diary and so Beatrice Webb would not have expected anyone to see it and so could have exaggerated the lack of benefits of the Liberal government’s National Health Insurance Act. Furthermore as it is a diary entry it could just represent Webb’s views on that particular day, with hindsight Webb may later change her views.

One area where both the sources are similar is their date. Both sources C & D were created in May 1911 giving them both strengths and weaknesses. The strength of the fact both sources are from May 1911 is that the issue of social welfare was at the forefront of the political agenda after findings from Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth showed the extent of the poverty in Britain, and so both authors should be well informed on how far the National Health Insurance Act had to go to tackle these problems. On the other hand the weakness of the sources both being from May 1911 is that they were both created before the act was passed, and so both sources discuss perceived consequences that the authors think that the Act will have, rather than the actual benefits that might come once the Act came into place.

Overall sources C and D both provide a fair amount of evidence for differing views of the benefits of the Liberal government’s National Health Insurance Act of 1911 due to their authors both being at the forefront of social reform as well as the dates that the sources were created being a time at which the issue of social reform was high up the political agenda. However there are many weaknesses in both sources mainly due to the fact that neither of them are completely representative and so not many views are presented on the benefits of the Liberal government’s National Health Insurance Act of 1911. Moreover they were both created before the National Health Insurance Act was passed and so neither have hindsight on how many benefits the act actually had.