How effective were the Liberal Reforms between 1906 and 1914?
Paul Davidson
Before the 1900s most politicians thought that the poor had brought on their money problems themselves, and there was no health care, education, social services, unemployment benefit at all. If you were in poverty you would have to find your own way out of it, the government had no involvement in the problems among the poor of Britain. This was widely known as “Self Help”.
The huge scale of the Liberal party's victory in the 1906 general election guaranteed many new faces among the ranks of Liberal MPs, in favour of change in the field of social welfare. Between the years 1906 and 1914, the Liberals took steps to improve the health standards and the living and working conditions of the lower class. The main areas of people who the new legislation was targeted on was the working class under risk of poverty due to sickness or unemployment, their children and old age pensioners. The effectiveness of Liberal rule on these matters is not clear, as much of the legislation introduced to solve poverty problems, can be argued to be unsuccessful at what it was intended to achieve.
The first task undertaken by the new Liberal government was the welfare of children. The issue of children too hungry or generally debilitated was well documented by 1906. By 1911, less than a third of all education authorities were using rates to support school meal provision and it had taken until 1914 for the Board of Education to make such provision compulsory.
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 leavers.
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.
The second 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 £31 or less. Although this legislation did help to improve the social conditions of many pensioners and help to prevent extreme poverty, there were many exclusions. Those who had claimed poor relief in the previous year or had been in prison in the previous ten years had no entitlement. Also excluded were those who had failed to work regularly. The government did reduce the qualifying period for ex-convicts to two years to attempt to widen the success of this Act. The amount of money received was relatively small and it can be argued that it was not enough to prevent poverty and the pension-able age was so high that not many would reach it. This and the fact that all those who claimed poor relief the previous year were excluded strengthens the case that this piece of legislation was not successful in improving the poverty situation, but maintaining it.
Once the issue of Old Age Pensions was addressed, how ever limitedly, the government moved onto the problem of loss of earning due to unemployment or sickness. The general economic situation was becoming difficult for the lower income groups. Unemployment was rising and wages were falling, which made this a pressing issue. At the Board of Trade, the government initiated work on the setting up of labour exchanges, like today’s job centres, which eventually came into practice in 1909. 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.
