To What Extent did the Liberal Partys Reforms After 1906 Succeed in Addressing Britains Social Problems?
To What Extent did the Liberal Party's Reforms After 1906 Succeed in Addressing Britain's Social Problems?
In 1906, the liberal party's general election manifesto spoke of the previous conservatives government's "failure to deal in a serious spirit with the social questions of which so much was heard at the general election of 1895" (liberal manifesto 1906 at www.politicalstuff.co.uk) . This essay will attempt to answer the question of whether the liberal's were successful in dealing with the social problems of the time, which the conservatives were deemed to have neglected.
In order to effectively answer this question, first one must realise exactly what were the social problems in early Edwardian Britain:- It can be said that there was no single massive problem; more a number of smaller interrelated problems, for example unemployment, poor health and an outdated system of relief. These problems were deemed so serious that they were thought to be effecting both the home economy and the security of the empire, even the traditionally Laissez Faire, non - interventionist Liberal party decided that massive government intervention had become necessary. It is often said that the Bore war of the late 19th / early 20th century woke British politics up to the fact that reform was essential, it was around this time that it was realised the huge extent poverty and poor health in working classes - the army was rejecting recruits at an alarming rate, and performance in battle was often poor. It also became apparent that even the home economy was in danger because of the aforementioned social problems. Indeed as Floyd and McCloskey said in the The Economic History of Britain since 1700 "if the working classes were not strong enough to work hard ...Britain's prospects were bleak." (Floyd and McCloskey, 1997)
The liberals decided to rely on social research as the basis of much of their social policy reform, works by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, helped the government quantify the scale of the social problems and to a degree how they should target their policies to be most effective.
Rowntree's research had led to his "poverty cycle" theory, where he hypothesised that throughout the average person's lifetime, there were three particular times where he or she was particularly vulnerable to falling below the "poverty line" (which Rowntree depicts as the level of income which one needs to support oneself nutritionally). These periods of want didn't just affect the unemployed or destitute by any means, in fact, the "average" working man with a large family would be expected to experience these periods of poverty. The remarkable extent of poverty is an example of the huge scale of the social problems that the liberals had to tackle, it is worth considering in the context of the question that total success in resolving them would have been neigh on impossible
As seen in the graph above, there were three key periods when a member of working class were more than likely to experience poverty - as a child from the age of around five to age fifteen, when the parent of young children at age thirty till around forty and finally as an elderly person unable to work to support oneself, from around age sixty five onward. The liberal policy's were very specific at targeting groups in order to try and reduce the health effects of this poverty.
This research had a direct result on Liberal social policy, in 1908, the old age pension bill was introduced, taken through parliament by Lloyd George, then as chancellor. It said that men and women over seventy was eligible for a 5S a week state aid.
The aid was hugely popular, partly because the stigma previously associated with poverty had been removed, largely since one could collect their money from the post office. It is obvious that the elderly who did receive the pension did benefit from a markedly increased quality of life.
The old age ...
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This research had a direct result on Liberal social policy, in 1908, the old age pension bill was introduced, taken through parliament by Lloyd George, then as chancellor. It said that men and women over seventy was eligible for a 5S a week state aid.
The aid was hugely popular, partly because the stigma previously associated with poverty had been removed, largely since one could collect their money from the post office. It is obvious that the elderly who did receive the pension did benefit from a markedly increased quality of life.
The old age pension bill's effectiveness was vastly reduced by the number of eligibility clauses the liberal governments included in it in order to keep costs down. Firstly, the fact that one couldn't claim if they were under seventy was a major issue, around the time the bill was implemented, it was very rare that someone would live till seventy. In addition to this, even if someone did live to seventy, they still would have had to endure at least five years where they were unable to work (say after sixty five) through poor health and therefore not earn a wage, resulting in poverty. Secondly, huge portions of society were excluded from receiving the benefit on moral grounds; if someone had a criminal record or had previously received some kind of poor relief, they couldn't claim - this seems bizarre, as people from a poorer background would be far more likely to receive poor relief or turn to crime than those from richer backgrounds. It can be said that this eligibility clause stopped the people that needed aid most from receiving it. Finally, Five shillings a week was nearly impossible to live off, making it not feasible that the elderly could survive solely on their pension, as Thompson says, the pension provided "a sub-subsistence standard of living" (Thompson, 1975).
Poverty amongst children as identified in the poverty cycle, was also tackled head on by the liberal government by the introduction of free school food. Once again this policy was very popular with its recipients as there was no stigma associated with receiving the policy. Free food and milk (a practice that was only abolished recently) were given to school children, the nutritional benefit of this was undoubted, with children who would have previously been wanting for food, now receiving enough to enable them to grow and develop properly, resulting in healthy physically able adults, it is obvious to see that this is of massive social importance. As Semmel explains, a healthy working class is vital as "the condition of the working classes as the basis of imperialism" and goes on to clarify "the need for a healthy and vigorous imperial race" by saying "that it would be impossible to defend and maintain the empire without such a base" (Semmel, 1960)
It is argued that this policy, once again, did not go far enough to meet the problem of poverty and the associated health implication. This is because children only received one meal a day, which is not enough to encourage ample growth. As well as this, while school meals were provided, health care was not, this is vital as children are often the most at risk from ill health / disease.
In addition to the old age pension and free school meals, the liberals had many other policies to try and address the social aliments of the time. One of the biggest of these aliments was the nations health as a whole, health care especially amongst the working classes was previously a rarity. When the liberal government introduced health insurance benefits in 1913 to workers below the tax limit, this, along with the introduction of a national panel of doctors, massively helped the nations health provision as 15,000,000 (Thompson, 1975)workers were covered by the insurance.
Although definitely a huge improvement, the Health insurance policy was deemed to not have gone far enough to truly help the desperately sick; most hospital care was not covered by the insurance- therefore the outdated and inefficient systems of Charitable and poor law aid still had to be relied on. In addition to this, while workers were covered by the insurance, their family's were not Once again, the liberal social reforms were seen to help, just didn't go far enough to be judged a success.
The massive unemployment in Britain around the turn of the 20th century was damaging to British society not just in terms of contributing to poverty, but had many other sociological effects. High unemployment was deemed to further be damaging to Britain's society as it resulted in Britain falling economically behind its international rivals in addition to having the effect of working class disillusionment, as their jobs weren't secure. The full scale of high levels of unemployment's consequences were realised at the time with Lloyd George describing how "the shadow of unemployment was rising ominously above the horizon. Our international rivals were forging ahead at a great rate" before going on to say that the "working class was becoming sullen with discontent". (Thompson, 1975)
In 1910 the liberals installed policies to try and deal with the high levels of unemployment which was having such a negative effect on the country as a whole. Winston Churchill introduced a system of labour exhanges, which can best be described as primitive job centres, these exchanges allowed better matching of workers looking for work with employers looking for labour. This was especially important around the time of reform as much of the employment was short term or seasonal.
Although unemployment was being reduced, therefore also reducing the social problems associated with it (i.e. poverty), with hindsight, it is easy to see how the liberal reforms, at least in part, ignored many of the other social problems associated with labour.
This is best demonstrated by the fact that, instead of being diminished when the liberals labour policies where introduced, worker discontent was still rising, so much so that around 1914 their was a bout industrial action, tainted with violence commonly known as "the labour unrest". This is a sign to show just how slow the Liberal government were to change their social policy's in order to meet the demands of the day - poor working conditions, a halt in wage growth and unemployment were not being tackled with the vigour that the workers now expected after other social reform, as Thompson describes in his book The Edwardians "Better education and rising standards of living .....brought rising expectations".(Thompson, 1975)
The liberal government of the time realised that no matter the scale of their social reform, full employment was never going to be achieved, in fact far from it. They realised that this meant that there would still be a large number of the population living in dire conditions as and when they were out of employment. In 1911, an unemployment insurance was introduced, enabling workers, once in employment to contribute to a fund that should they fall out of work - would allow them to claim state aid. For one worker, he himself would contribute 1/3 of the amount, his employer another 1/3 and the government would give the final 1/3.
While successful in reducing extreme poverty of workers in industries where there was a high level of employment fluctuation (ie construction). As with most of the liberals reforms, it can be argued that the reform just didn't go far enough - indeed only 2,250,00 (Thompson. 1975) workers were covered by the scheme - around 10% of the working populous.
Another failing of the unemployment insurance scheme (which also affected the health insurance scheme) is that workers were forced to pay from their own pockets. As Thompson says in his book The Edwardians "although there were state and employers contributions in each case, it is equally striking that under each scheme workers were now legally forced to be thrifty" (Thompson, 1975). If a working class family of the time weren't under the poverty line, they were almost certainly very close to it - many resented the fact that a proportion of their wages, legally had to go to these schemes. Many wouldn't see the benefits for years while still having to pay for the insurance. Even though contributions were a relatively small amount, as most working class family's had to budget very carefully, it resulted in an expenditure that had the ability to make negative impact on their quality of live.
Many sources point to the liberals reforms to being at least in part successful, with the numbers in poverty being reduced substantially and a great increase in health care provision, with Thompson claiming that "improvements in working class standards of living continued" throughout the liberal government, this is backed up by the fact that during the first two decades of the twentieth century, life expectancy climbed from 50 to 60 (Thompson, 1975)
While Liberal reforms were certainly radical for the time, their effectiveness has always been questioned; many see that only the ideas were exceptional, not the level of expenditure that backed them up (Floyd and McCloskey, 1997). More specifically, it is argued that this lack of expenditure resulted in the unemployment insurance only protecting a small sector of the workforce along with that the old age pension only helping a very small group of the poor (Thompson, 1975). The blame for this lack of expenditure is often squarely levied at the liberal party, with two of its key figures, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill seemingly unwilling to offer support its policy's with effective amounts of investment; Semmel states that "both Lloyd George and Churchill continued to oppose the large service expenditures imperialists" (Semmel, 1960). Instead, money raised from the increased tax revenue of the "peoples budget" of 1909, that could have been used to support social reform was more often than not used for other purposes, most notably on naval expansion.
When analysing the extent of the reform, it is also worth keeping perspective on the society where they were taking place; the welfare state was a completely new and alien idea and government social intervention was an idea not easily digested by the populace as a whole. Perhaps the liberal party did as much as they could, especially considering the fact that as that Michael E Rose States in The Relief of Poverty, laissez-faire was "strongly entrenched as an attitude of mind. Self help and independence were praised as virtues" (Semmel, 1960).
Bibliography
Floud, Roderick & McCloskey D.N, The Economic History of Britain since 1700 Vol2 (1994) (Cambridge)
2 Fraser D, The Evolution of British Welfare State (1973) (Macmillan)
3. Rose M. E, The Relief of Poverty 1834 - 1914 (1986)
4. Semmel B, Imperialism and Social (1960)(George Allen & Unwin)
5. Thompson P, The Edwardians, The remaking of British Society (1992) (Weidenfeld and Nicolson)
6. www.politicalstuff.co.uk
.........LOOK UP
Second class poverty, ---- big ---- ie drink. - taxes raised.
The Changes employed by the liberal party after 1906 were far reaching
246 thompson Labour exchanges .
Pension not effective
Taxes increased to help pay for things
Health,
918 - right to vote page 238 thompson - empowering further social change. Still heavily biased.
Point social reform - radical move - ended in major political changes - H O L - but did it really change?
What did they do
WHY NOT THAT GOOD
"There were....., significant social advances achieved through the Edwardian liberal governments, but they in no sense approached the social transformation that their radical supporters called for." Thompson
It can be argued that the policys didn't go as far as they could have because Laissez Faire attitude Instead they were of the opinion that eventually the free market will overcome the poverty struggle by allowing people to work their way out of poverty. Michael E Rose States this beautifully in his book The Relief of Poverty by saying that laissez-faire was "strongly entrenched as an attitude of mind. Self help and independence were praised as virtues"1
Can be argued - More education needed - encourage, contributions to Unemployment e.t.c no body paid in
910 - Lloyd george suggests all partys come together to deal with probs of the poor law. Proposal didn't work - there fore..... page 243 semmel .
Argued created more problems - house of lords, social unrest in Ireland - policys ?? 252 thomspon
Cash - also not available, finacing war effort - naval expansion
909 - peoples budget - money for dreadnoughts and social reform - not enough?
Expendature "both loyd george and Churchill - continued to oppose the large service expenditures desired by the liberal imperialists" semmel
Context is important - it was radical change -
Thompson "
Enter the liberal government reform programme:
Many commenters suggest that in fact the boer war was the main reason for spurring on.... Reform , week army, Therfore reduce poverty.
Unemployment was a major issue, seasonal, trade unions in effective. International competition - semmel pag 188, unemployed - no money
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Chris Allen