In 1908 the Liberals passed the Children’s Act, which became known as the Children’s Charter. This set up juvenile courts and juvenile prisons called ‘Borstals’. These allowed children to be treated differently from criminals. Children were also banned from buying tobacco and alcohol. The most surprising part of the Act stated that Parents were legally responsible for the upbringing and welfare of their children by.
Old Age Pensions
Having dealt with children, the Liberals moved on to tackle the problems of the elderly. The Pensions Act was passed in 1908 and pensions were paid for the first time at the age of 70 in 1909. A single person received 25 pence a week and a married couple received 37 1/2 pence. These pensions were non-contributory, which meant that people did not have to make any payments for them. In fact the government miscalculated the number of people who were entitled to a pension in 1909. Altogether, there were about 1,250,000 people of seventy or over, which was more than had been expected. The amounts paid were not high and were only available for old people with an income of less than £26 a year, or £39 for a married couple. But they meant that old people did not have to go to the workhouse and did not have to rely on their children for charity.
There had been little opposition to the attempt to improve the health and welfare of children, but Old Age Pensions was quite a different matter. Conservatives in the House of Commons attacked the idea because they claimed that it would encourage people to be lazy and prevent them from standing on their own two feet. There was a bitter argument over the Pensions Act in 1908. The situation got even worse in 1909 when the Liberals tried to raise taxes to pay for all of the spending. The Conservatives tried to block the Liberals plans by using their majority in the House of Lords, but were eventually forced to give way.
Trade Boards
The Liberals then tried to help the low-paid. The worst conditions were in the ‘sweated trades’, jobs where workers often worked at home or in small workshops next to their employers house. These workers usually could not join a trade union and could be forced to work for very low wages in poor conditions. The Trade Boards Act set minimum wage levels for jobs where the workers could do little to help themselves. A second act was passed in 1913 to extend protection.
Labour Exchanges
Until 1910 there was no way of advertising job vacancies. The only way that a worker could find out where there were jobs was by walking from factory to factory. In 1910 the Liberals set up a network if more than 400 Labour Exchanges (Job centres). These advertised jobs in one place.
The National Insurance Act
The most important of all the Liberal Reforms was the National Insurance Act of 1911. For the first time ever workers were offered protection against ill-health and unemployment. The Act covered about 14,000,000 workers in industries such as building, shipbuilding and engineering who earned less than £160 a year. Every week the worker had to buy a stamp costing 4d (about one and a half pence) and stick it on to his insurance card. His employer added a further 3d and the government contributed 2d. In return, when the worker was away from work because he was sick he received 10 shillings (50p) a week for twenty-six weeks in any year and also got free medical treatment, disabled payments and maternity benefit. Medical treatment was provided by doctors who agreed to be ‘on the panel’. This meant that they were prepared to treat ‘panel’ patients and received a fee for every one they treated. Some doctors refused to be on the panel because they could make more money by treating patients privately.
The second part of the National Insurance Act came into force in 1912. This extended insurance to 2,500,000 workers in seasonal employment. This meant that they would only be able to work for part of the year. The worker, the government and the employer all paid two and a half pence and the worker could receive unemployment benefit of 7 shillings (35p) a week for fifteen weeks in any year. It is significant that workers were paid more for being sick than they were for being unemployed. There was still the suspicion that the unemployed were lazy.
In 1912 the Liberals added one final reform. Many children still did not receive adequate medical treatment even after all of the changes that the Liberals had introduced. So in 1912 the Liberals set up children’s clinics. If the School Medical Service said that children should go and see a doctor, parents could take them to the clinics free of charge.
How successful were the Liberal Reforms?
The Liberal reforms were a very important step forward. For the first time the government accepted responsibility for the well-being of some of the people of Britain. At the time the Liberal Reforms were regarded as being a revolution, however, looking back there were weaknesses.
Old Age Pensions were only paid at the age of 70, when average life expectancy was about forty-nine. This meant that the great majority of British people would never live long enough to draw their pensions.
Only the lowest paid workers were covered by National Insurance, and it only included men. This meant that most workers were not covered at all. In addition, the medical treatment offered by the Act did not include dentists and opticians and only covered the worker, NOT his family. What was more, hospital treatment was only provided for TB, the most dangerous disease at the time.
Perhaps the most important weakness was that the Poor Law and the workhouses were not abolished. When benefits ended after 26 weeks or 15 weeks, the worker had to go to the workhouse.
But it is easy to criticise. The Liberal reforms were a start. Now at least workers had some protection from some of the main causes of poverty. The Liberals had never intended to take over complete responsibility for the welfare of the British people, they had wanted to provide some sort of a safety net to prevent people falling into absolute poverty. If you compare the situation in 1913 with that in 1905, a great change had come about. From providing nothing, the government had begun to provide all the services that we now expect from the Welfare State.
The Second World War
When war broke out in September 1939 most people expected the worst. It was going to be a long and very dangerous war. The government expected that there would be heavy bombing of British cities almost immediately and that casualties would be very high, so all hospitals were taken over by the government under the Emergency Medical Service. Their work was co-ordinated for the first time and all non-emergency patients, and many people who were seriously ill, were sent home. The government also wanted people to be as healthy as possible. Healthy people would not need to take days off work. Healthy people would not need to take up hospital beds, which might be needed for people injured in air-raids and fighting.
The Government also put into effect plans for evacuation of children, schoolteachers, pregnant women and the elderly. Children who were evacuated were often found to be very unhealthy. Many people were very surprised at this in the countryside.
Evacuation led to a complete mixing of social classes. Children went off to their evacuation areas with the rest of the pupils from their school. Their new homes could be anything from a cottage, to a farm or even a castle. Never before had the poor and the better off in Britain found out so much about how the ‘other half lived’, as children from middle class families were sent to live with working class families and vice versa.
Many host families were horrified at the state of health of evacuees who came from city centres.
In 1941 the Women’s Institute compiled a report on the health of evacuees and listed the problems that they suffered from.
The state of the children was such that the school had to be fumigated.
The children were filthy. We have never seen so many verminous children lacking any knowledge of clean habits. They had not ha d a bath for months.
One child was suffering from scabies, the majority had it in their hair, and the others had dirty septic sores all over their bodies.
Some of the children were sent in their ragged little garments. Most of the children were walking on the ground, their shoes had no soles and just uppers hanging together.
Many of the mothers and children were bed wetters
The Government was also very worried that there would not be enough food for everybody so it introduced rationing. This was intended to give everyone enough to live on. A committee was set up to work out how many calories people needed a week. People doing heavy jobs got more. Young children and pregnant women got extra supplements. Children were given orange juice and cod liver oil and from 1940 all pregnant women and children under the age of five received one pint of milk a day. School meals were made available for every child so that mothers could work during the day and not have to worry about their children at lunchtime. This meant that all children received at least one square meal a day for the first time.
The impact of rationing
Rationing also had unexpected results. Despite having much less choice of food in shops, during the war, people began to get healthier. This was partly because the British Government wanted them to and partly because rationing stopped them eating foods that were bad for them and made them eat foods which were healthy for them.
FOODS THAT WERE FOODS THAT WERE NOT
RATIONED
Sweets, Meat, Butter, Jam, Vegetables, Bread, Potatoes, Fish,
Cheese, Fats Milk (actually milk was rationed,
but the milk ration was 3 pints a
week and this was an increase for
most people)
These restrictions meant that from 1940 to 1945, the consumption of potatoes rose by 40%, of vegetables by 30% and of milk by 30%. For many people, rationing actually meant an increased and an improved supply of food every week. Poor people found that they were getting a much better diet than they had been before the war.
The government also urged people to produce as much food for themselves as they could. More than 50% of working people began to keep allotments. These were part of the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. By 1943 there were 1,400,000 allotments in Britain.
Rationing had a profound effect on government policy. Before it had been believed that it was impossible to make major changes to the nation's health. Many politicians did not even believe that it was the government's responsibility. Together with the evidence that evacuation gave of life in the inner cities, rationing helped change these views on the role of government.
The ease with which the nation's health was improved was noticed by many people, including the playwright George Bernard Shaw. He commented on the improvement in complexions and the reduction in obesity.
How did the Second World War help to change people’s ideas?
It soon became clear that it was possible to improve the health of people in Britain if the Government was prepared to do something about it. It also became clear that people in Britain were having to put up with a great deal of hardship. Bombing destroyed many homes and killed more than 60,000 people in Britain. Family life was destroyed and many people worked more than twelve hours a day seven days a week in war factories.
The health and cleanliness of many evacuees was publicised in 1941 in a report was compiled by the Women's Institute. The Picture Post ran a big campaign to persuade the government to do something at the end of the war to improve the standard of health of the British people. Many people began to think that at the end of the war something should be done to try and guarantee the people of Britain a better life.
So in 1941 Sir William Beveridge was asked to prepare a report on what should be done at the end of the war.
The Beveridge Report
In July 1940 the writer J.B. Priestley wrote:
I will tell you what we did for servicemen and their young wives at the end of the last war. We did nothing. After the cheering and the flag waving was over, and all the medals were given out, somehow the young heroes disappeared, but in a year or two there were a lot of shabby men about, who didn’t seem to have been lucky in the scramble for jobs.
Priestley summed up how many people had felt at the end of the First World War. This time, people believed, the opportunity should not be missed. So the British Government asked Sir William Beveridge to lead a Royal Commission to consider how Britain should be rebuilt after the war. The Beveridge Report was published in 1942. It became a best seller.
Beveridge recommended that the people of Britain should be protected from Five Giant Evils; Squalor, Ignorance, Want, Idleness and Disease. It went on to explain how this could be done. Beveridge said that the Government should take responsibility for the welfare of the people of Britain, ‘From the Cradle to the Grave’. It recommended that a Welfare State should be set up in Britain.
Why was the Beveridge Report published?
William Beveridge was a civil servant and he had been involved in the Liberal reforms of the years from 1906 to 1914. The Liberal Reforms had only helped a minority of people in Britain. The families of wage earners did not receive benefits and there was no automatic entitlement to medical treatment. Many mothers put off medical treatment for themselves in order to pay for treatment for their children
In 1936 Seebohm Rowntree published a second Report into poverty in Britain. The findings of his first report, in 1901, had been one of the reasons for the Liberal Reforms before the First World War. The second report had shown that poverty still existed in Britain and about 10% of the population suffered real hardship. Our Towns, which was published from 1939-42 revealed that many poor families had only four shillings (20 p) for food a week
The suffering of the British people during the Second World War convinced many politicians that real action must be taken. After the First World War, David Lloyd George had announced that he was going to build 'homes fit for heroes to live in', but the economic problems of the inter-war years had prevented major changes.
By 1942 there was even more powerful evidence of the need for change. Evacuation had showed just what the lives of some people in Britain were like. Many evacuees were in very poor health. The reports published by the Women's Institute that described the physical state of many evacuees. They revealed that they suffered from infestations of lice and many diseases caused by malnutrition.
Rationing had shown that government intervention could be effective. Beforehand some politicians had stated that it was impossible to improve the health of the nation; rationing changed it almost overnight. In addition the government provided dietary supplements for the first time, such as orange juice and cod liver oil. These had major impact on the health of children.
Ignorance
The first part of the Welfare State was put into place in 1944. The Coalition government passed the Butler Education Act. This was based on the Hadow report of 1926 and the Spens report of 1938.
The Butler Education Act, 1944
The Butler Education Act, which was passed in 1944, was the first part of the Welfare State to be put into practice. It tackled one of Beveridge's Five Giant Evils, 'Ignorance. The Act set up a Ministry of Education to replace the Board of Education. This immediately suggested that the government was giving education greater priority. All fees for state schools were abolished and the school leaving age was raised to fifteen. This meant that all children would attend secondary schools for the first time. They would go to primary schools from the ages of five to eleven and then to secondary schools from the ages of eleven to fifteen.
At the age of eleven, all children would take a test, the 'eleven plus', to decide what form of secondary education was appropriate for them. There were to be three types of schools, Grammar. Secondary Modern and Technical. All three types of schools were to enjoy of equal status and equal resources.
The 1944 Act marked an important change in educational policy in Britain. For the first time the government acknowledged that all children had a right to secondary education free of charge. The Act also granted, in theory at least, equality of opportunity in education to girls. Free and compulsory secondary schooling seemed to suggest that girls would no longer be prevented from gaining the education needed for a career. No more would they be forced into unskilled and lowly paid work at an early age, which they gave up when they got married. Unfortunately there were many more grammar schools for boys than there were for girls and the raising of the school leaving age to fifteen made little difference at first.
Although the Butler Education Act was not directly concerned with health, it did play an important part in improving the lives of people in Britain. Because it forced all children to go to secondary school, it meant that they would all have to study science subjects, which beforehand they would have not come into contact with. This resulted in improved knowledge and understanding about physical health and the importance of a good diet.
Part 5: The Welfare State
The Welfare State became one of the big issues in the general election in 1945. The Labour Party said that it would set up a Welfare State, but the Winston Churchill, the leader of the Conservative Party said he would not. This made many people vote Labour. The Labour Government, which was elected in July 1945, immediately began to plan the Welfare State.
The first part of the Welfare State was the Family Allowances Act in 1945. This paid mothers five shillings (25p) a week for every child after the first one. The purpose of family allowances was to provide help for mothers in bringing up their children. Mothers did not have to qualify for payment. All were entitled to it, no matter how much they earned.
The main parts of the Welfare State came in the following year; the National Insurance Act, the National Health Service Act, the Industrial Injuries Act and the National Assistance Act. Because the Welfare State would require a great deal of planning, a day was fixed for the start of the new system. This became known as the ‘Appointed Day’, 5 July 1948.
The impact of the Welfare State
The most important change after July 1948 was that people no longer had to worry about whether they could afford treatment. In the 1930s many families had saved for their children to be treated and sometimes for the father as he would have to work, but often the mother would go without. The Welfare State put an end to all that. As one writer put it,
‘The Welfare State was an enormous sigh of relief.’
In 1951 Seebohm Rowntree carried out a third survey into poverty. This time he found that only 1.5% of people were living in poverty
The Welfare State also had considerable impact on life expectancy. In 1900 people in Britain lived on average to be about 47 years old. This is called average life expectancy. This does not mean that everybody died at the age of 47, but that that was the average number of years that people lived, taking into account all those who died when they were young. Many people lived to their 70s. By the 1990s people live to be about 77 years old.
The Welfare State helped improve life expectancy because sickness and other benefits mean that people can look after themselves better. Old Age Pensions mean that people can afford to retire and do not have to work forever. But most important was the fact that people received medical treatment when they needed it and did not have to pay for it.
There are other reasons for the increase in life expectancy. We now know a lot more about medicine and the body. All children go to secondary school and study science. New medicines have been discovered, like Penicillin, which is an antibiotic. We can be protected against major diseases, like TB for example, by vaccination.
A further reason is that people now often have much smaller families. The changes in medicine and health have meant that people no longer need to have so many children. In 1900 most families had at least 6 children, now the average is 2. Better health care means that many more children survive childhood. In 1900 many children died before they grew up. This is called the infant mortality rate. Benefits help parents to bring up children and mean that they can afford to feed them properly. Old Age Pensions mean that children are not needed to look after their parents in old age. Contraception is also available so that, parents have much more choice over the number of children they have. Women can now choose to have a career rather than to spend their lives producing children.
Changes in the British population in the twentieth century
In the twentieth century the population of Britain continued to rise, but the rise began to slow down.
In 1900 the population of Britain was 40,000,000, in 1948 it was 48,000,000, in the 1990s it was 57,000,000. The main cause of the rise is a fall in the death rate. This means that fewer people are dying. Infant mortality has dropped as medical knowledge has developed. Many major diseases have been conquered, for example the BCG test and vaccination are available for Tuberculosis and the Salk vaccine is available for Poliomyelitis. Secondary education for all means that, children learn much more about their bodies and how to stay healthy. There is a great deal of emphasis on a healthy diet and lifestyle. Developments in surgery have also helped because it is now possible to tackle more medical problems than ever before. The NHS means that all people can afford medical treatment. But these changes have created problems for the Welfare State.
The last paragraph in the previous section explains why the rise in the population of Britain has begun to slow down and is now almost stable.