However, with the industrial revolution and increased population movements meant people could only receive help by returning to their parish of birth through the principle of ‘settlement’. This meant people were tied to a particular parish, if they tried to get help outside the parish they could be removed and even rejected. Unfortunately this came under increased strain and gradually rendered the Act obsolete. Parishes had to deal with more and more issues. For example with economy recessions, disease outbreak, and infectious disease and were not capable managing all the problems.
At the beginning of the 19th century Britain was suffering from high food prices and low wages due to wars in France. Furthermore many people believed that new farm machinery were taking away their jobs, this resulted in the swing riots in the 1820’s and early 1830’s. The government were concerned that they were on the verge of a revolution. Additionally many people saw the Poor law itself as causing the problems. In 1832 the Whig government set up a commission of enquiry in to the poor law.
This resulted in the Poor Law being totally abolished and the Poor Law Amendment Act 1934, being introduced. Through this new act parishes were grouped together, and they set up poor houses where people were forced to live if they wanted help. They were intentionally unattractive and only the really poor would want to live there. This meant that people were encouraged to work “the system was intended to ensure that those who received help were worse off” (Hill) than the poorest in work. They set up separate workhouses for the old and infirm, children and able-bodied males and females. The act then required hospital wards to be set up to be placed aside for the impoverished sick and empowered justices of the peace. These were to be given to anyone for medical relief with ‘sudden and dangerous illnesses’. Then the act set up a Poor Law Commission to supervise the implemented of the act (Bloy, The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, 2011).
Furthermore measures were introduced such as a limit to working hours of children such as The 1833 Factory Act limited child labour for 9-13 year of age could only work nine hours a day, and had to be given two hours of schooling a day. Young people aged 13-18 could only work twelve hours a day. There were further changes to improve health and safety in factories and other places in work. An independent factory inspection was set up. The awareness of poor sanitation and the effects grew and steps were taken to improve sewerage disposal and a demand for a supply of clean water.
From 1871 local authorities were required to employee medical offices to deal with public health issues. State support was also provided for education also began in the nineteenth century starting in 1833 with grants to support the work of church schools which provided some education for the poor. The liberals furthermore in 1870 started providing primary education, and in 1880 schooling became compulsory for the first time between the ages of 5 and 10.
Towards the end of the 19th century attitudes towards the poor began to change however, the main view of the governing class in the last part of the 19th century was that state involvement should be kept to a minimum. The two most famous and inspiring were Charles Booth who wrote ‘Life and Labour of the people in London’ between 1886 and 1903, and Seebohm Rowntree, who wrote about the ‘City of York in poverty’ – a study of town life in 1901 (Lewis, 2009).
Through their research they found that £1 a week was the minimum income to keep a family above the ‘poverty line’. They concluded that if you could not afford the basic basket of food you were below the poverty line. They found that 30% lived below the poverty line. They further identified the causes of the problem as due to sickness, old age, unemployment, low wages and large families rather than laziness which had been thought previously. The findings of Booth and Roundtree had a huge effect on important influential liberal writers and politicians. Popular writers of philosophy such as T H Green, J M Roberson and J T Hobhouse gave intellectual weight and popular support to the ideas of the progressive Liberals.
In 1899-1902 young men in their thousands applied to join the ‘British Army’ for the Boer War and were rejected in their thousands. This led to some industrial areas of the Army where two out of three potential recruits did not pass the basic army medical examination. This reinforced concern that the British working people were somehow operating at a less than efficient level. This contrast to the successful economies of Germany and the USA seemed to imply that Britain had an inferior workforce. Furthermore because of these problems the British army struggled to defeat the Boers.
Furthermore concern doomed as Britain’s position as the world’s leading industrial nation had been declining since 1970. By 1900 both Germany and the USA had overtaken Britain. Lloyd George was Prime minister of the United Kingdom at the head of a wartime coalition government between the years of 1916-1922 and was the leader of the Liberal Party from 1926-1931. He believed that if Britain wanted to compete it needed a healthy more educated and efficient workforce.
In 1906 the liberal party took the general election by storm. In the campaign leading to the election the issue of poverty had been the 7th most discussed problem. In the liberal campaign speeches, once elected the liberal government immediately launched the most ambitious and extensive programme of the welfare reforms ever introduced in Britain. Between 1867 and 1884 almost half electoral votes came from the working class.
This created the demand for a party that could represent them. This led to the emergence of the labour party. This meant that both liberals and conservatives had to compete with the new party. As the liberals were in government they had the ideology to help ease the poverty that ‘the state should tax the rich’. They created laws to improve standards factory acts, public health acts, education acts and the standard of living. This meant it was the balance between self-help (laissex faire) versus welfare state.
In 1942 the social insurance allied services report was created, this was better known as the Beveridge Report created by Sir William Beveridge. This assignment was created by the government to look at ways of how the welfare state can be improved. The report had great public support and attracted 635,000 copies. The report covered all the major welfare issues at the time. Beveridge found ‘five giants’, which were want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.
Want, was concerned with income support people needed. Beveridge looked at how much money was needed to meet the basic needs and used estimates from Rowntree. Beveridge created different types of benefits. Means-tested benefits which were assessed on how much money you had coming in and savings you held. Universal benefits were open to everyone regardless of your income. He found that Means tested benefits were mainly needed by the unemployed, sick and old.
Then he looked at disease, and proposed a health care available to all. Ignorance, this is where he looked at a state funded secondary education system. Squalor was concerned with dealing with housing problems. To solve this Beveridge looked at building affordable housing council houses to rent. Finally he seen idleness, this is where he looked at a plan to make sure mass unemployment never happens again. Using the work of John Maynard Keynes he suggested that it could be avoided if the government spent enough money to stimulate the economy.
Through Beveridge report his aims were not for the government to take on more responsibilities. His aims were more narrowly focused on solving key social problems and creating a safety net ‘from the cradle to the grave’. Beveridge did not want the people to become dependent on the welfare system. Beveridge believed that as problems were solved the state expenditure would be reduced. He saw that with a well educated, fully employed workforce, fewer people would need to claim benefits. Furthermore better health care would significantly reduce the illness and so cut the financial burden on the state (M.Holborn, 2007).
After the report was created it received large support from the government and most of Beveridge’s proposals were introduced. It was stated by Pat Thane (1942) it ‘caught the public imagination and came to symbolise the hope for a different, more just world. Some of the changes made because of this report were implemented in 1945 three years after the report was created. The Education Act 1944 created universal state secondary education and raised the school leaving age to 15 and came into effect in 1947. In 1948 the National Health Service was introduced, this allowed free services available for everyone including GP’s and hospital services. After the war the labour government was influenced by the views of the Beveridge report and tried to maintain a high level of unemployment. Furthermore the labour government implemented the policy of publically financing the buildings of new towns and led the way to a major house-building which resulted in 1 million houses built by 1951 (M.Holborn, 2007).
Bibliography
Bloy, M. (2002, November 16). Workhouses and the Poor law. Retrieved April 23, 2011, from The Victorian Web: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/eligible.html
Bloy, M. (2011, January 6). The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834. Retrieved April 12, 2011, from A web of english history: http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/poorlaw/poorlaw.htm
Lewis, S. (2009, November 19 19). Seebohm Rowntree’s pioneering work on poverty in York. Retrieved April 12, 2011, from The Press: http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/history/4702608.Seebohm_Rowntree___s_pioneering_work_on_poverty_in_York/
M.Holborn, M. (2007). Sociology Themes and Perspectives. London: Collins.
