This cultural change was more important than the rise of the Labour Party 1880-1900 since during the Conservative administration, policies that were intended to help the workers by providing more education and better housing had proved unpopular with working people, who could not see the benefits.
However it was really only in 1900 when the extent of national deficiency was highlighted by the Boer War that attitudes began to change significantly. For some time, during the 1880s and 1890s, employers had been becoming increasingly concerned with their inability to compete with the production rates of industries in the USA and Germany. The national scandal caused by the poor state of recruits for the Boer War made all classes of people from the riches to the poorest aware of the need for the government to do something if the country was to maintain its military and political status. Thus more and more people began to see poverty in a different life.
This shock coincided with New Liberalism, first suggested by TH Green in the early 1880s and taken up by the reforming Liberal journalist LT Hobhouse, that government and society had a duty to get involved and give the poor a helping hand towards a decent standard of living. The poor should be provided with a good start in life by providing health care, decent housing and education. Attitudes began to change once respected leaders realised that they had to intervene to improve the physical health of the nation.
Moreover the enfranchisement of working people in 1867 and 1884 made even the Conservatives change their attitude toward social reform. In an effort to maintain the support of working people in 1906 they put forward a policy of tariff reform, which they hoped would lead to an expansion of jobs and businesses in Britain, as foreign competition was removed. They planned to use the taxes raised to provide health, education and housing. To combat this, the Liberals continued to support free trade and cheap food imports. The electoral clash of 1906 reflects the way attitudes towards poverty had changed in the previous twenty years.
Thus in the long term it was the work of individuals and the enfranchisement of working people that caused the change while in the short term it was fears over national deficiency and rivalry between political parties that changed attitudes towards social reform.
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ncjns (student)
