Meanwhile, in 1907, the Education Act made medical inspections for children compulsory. Under this Act, the Board of Education was able to specify that at least three inspections must take place during a child's school years. This was introduced in order to reduce the outbreaks of disease, which were very frequent at the time. Although this step helped improve national health levels in children, there were no such measures introduced after school life. The fact that there was no National Health Service introduced shows that although the Liberals attempted to improve the welfare of children, they did not improve the health conditions of adults or school leaver’s.
Finally, the Children's act of 1908 introduced a consolidation of measures to deal with child neglect and abuse and set up juvenile courts and remand homes to remove child offenders from the adult courts and prisons. This Act ensured children were not living on the streets without food or education. The attempts made to improve child welfare were eventually successful, but the time taken to enforce all the legislation means the laws passed only helped improve conditions for some children during the period from 1906 to 1914.
Another main target for the Liberals was the welfare of old age pensioners. Poverty was high as they had no successful financial backing from the government and could not make enough money working. The Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1908. The Act provided for pensions of 5s per week to be paid to those aged 70 or over who had annual incomes of £21 or less. For incomes over £21 a sliding scale of descending, graduated payments would be made up to a ceiling of a £31 annual income, at which point the payments ceased. This legislation did help to improve the social conditions of many pensioners and help to prevent extreme poverty.
The Government now had to deal with that fact that unemployment was rising and wages were falling. This made the economic situation a pressing issue due to the loss of earnings from unemployment or sickness. At the Board of Trade, the government initiated work on the setting up of labour exchanges, which eventually resulted in legislation in 1909. It fixed wages in designated industries where there was little or no trade union strength. Many argue that the introduction of labour exchanges was ineffective as work was still very hard to find and wages were low, not allowing the average lower income workers to pull themselves over the poverty line.
Although work on schemes to introduce sickness and unemployment insurance was well advanced by 1909, their eventual implementation was delayed until the National Insurance Act of 1911. Many government politicians such as David Lloyd George were determined to introduce this scheme.
The National Insurance Act was in two distinct parts. Part one dealt with health insurance and part two with unemployment insurance. This act was a positive move by the Liberals towards reducing poverty, as due to health levels being so bad at the time many were left sick with no way of receiving money.
On the other hand, this Act may not have been very successful due to a number of reasons. The fact that this scheme did not cover hospital treatment, except admission to the sanatorium intended to benefit tuberculosis sufferers, increased the risk of poverty. The Act only covered workers and not their families, which meant that there was still a risk of poverty if a member of the family needed medical treatment. The government did attempt to improve the scheme by abolishing the reduced benefits for the second 13-week period in favour of the full benefit for a period of 26 weeks. Although this was an improvement, many workers were sick for longer than this, especially those who could not afford to pay for hospital treatment. The fact that this scheme was self-contributory reduced its success. Weekly contributions were raised from the worker (4d), the employer (3d) and the government (2d). The worker still did benefit from this if they were sick as the slogan 'nine pence for four pence', used by Lloyd George to popularise this concept shows. However, for many workers, this was just a cut in their wage, and therefore may have further encouraged poverty.
The Liberals failed in their attempt to introduce an eight-hour day for the mining industry when they achieved power. It took two years to introduce an eight hour mining day in 1908, and a further three to pass the 1911 Shops Act, which used the same principle including a half-day closing. Limits on working-hours in other industries were not set, which meant that in many cases people were working long hours for small wages. The government did attempt to improve this by setting up Trade Boards in 1909. They laid down minimum payments in areas where workers were liable to exploitation, where Trade Unions could not protect them. Such industries known as ‘sweated’ industries included tailoring, box making and lace spinning. The Liberals also extended the Workman's Compensation Act of 1897 in its scope to cover some six million workers from poverty due to injury at work. However, many industries were not covered at all, and this greatly contributed to the growth of poverty.
The issue that created the greatest difficulties for the Liberals, was one of the oldest: Ireland. In April, 1912. Armed with new powers of the Parliament Act, Asquith introduced a new Home Bill Rule. Conservative opposition to it was reinforced on this occasion by a popular Protestant movement in Ulster; and the new Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, who had replaced Balfour in 1911, gave his covert support to army mutineers in Ulster. No compromises were acceptable, and a struggle to settle the fate of Ireland was still in full spate when war broke out in August in 1914. Most ominously for the Liberals, the Irish Home Rule supporters at Westminster were losing ground in southern Ireland, where in 1913 a militant working-class movement entered into close alliance with the nationalist forces of Sinn Fein. Ireland was obviously on the brink of civil war.
The Liberals passed the reform of Trade union act in 1913; this legalized union funds being used for political purposes. The 'explosion' of trade union activity from 1910-1914 reflects the failure of the Liberals to deal with contemporary social problems.
In the main, working people were unimpressed by Liberal reforms; the decline of wages and the increase in job insecurity seemed to outweigh the benefits of any welfare legislation. Although they did not create a welfare state or solve poverty, the Liberals did reduce the chances of poverty for working class families and old aged people, with such legislation as the National Insurance Act and Pensions Bill. The introduction of health inspections, food provision and juvenile courts for children helped to reduce the numbers of homeless, sick and hungry children. They also attempted to regulate the treatment of workers with the introduction of working hours and minimum wages in some industries. The fact that there were huge exclusions to Liberal legislation adds to the idea that Liberal rule was not successful with dealing with poverty and need.
It can be argued that the Liberal rule and reforms were very successful in terms of the scale of task with which the new government was faced. The fact that the House of Lords was mainly Conservative meant that the Liberal legislation programme was regularly opposed, because Conservatives regarded Liberal policies as confiscation to property rights and a threat to any idea of individual responsibility. This can justify the amount of time taken to introduce various laws, such as the National Insurance Act and the Pensions Act. The amount of people below the poverty line at the time was estimated at being as high as one third of the population. A view that no other government could have dealt with the situation of poverty any more effectively at that time adds to the theory that the Liberals were as successful as they could have been under the circumstances. Liberal legislation between the years of 1906 to 1914 laid the foundations of a welfare state.
Even still, the Liberal government of 1906-15 was one of the great reforming administrations of the twentieth century, it attempted to pass many reforms to improve Britain, and it broke the power of the House of Lords and laid the foundations of the modern welfare state.
Bibliography:
- Britannica Encyclopedia 98’
- Encarta 98’
- Context - Modern British History 1900-1999 (Michael Lynch)
- Internet
- Class notes
- Longman Study Guide- Modern History
- A Social History of England by ASA Briggs.