Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909, proposed a radical new approach to taxing to provide money for social reform. In attempt to redistribute the wealth the wealthy were taxed and the poor and impoverished were helped with the proceeds, a radical break from the past. Old people were one of the main beneficiaries from this scheme, in the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act, which provided non-contributory pensions for old people, who previously had to rely on charity, their families and the workhouse for income. The new Act allowed people to be independent, not having to rely on others to survive, some people even cried when they picked up their first pension in the post office, because they had never known anything similar or so generous before. It also showed that the government was tackling the problem themselves, and that they weren’t leaving it to local rates.
If a person had the misfortune to spend some time off work previously, they had to cope with what you had, and as there was usually only one wage earner in the family this was very difficult. Part I of the National Insurance Act of 1911, provided a scheme where sick pay was provided, if a certain amount was contributed to the scheme, to which the employer and government would also contribute. Free medical treatment and medicine was also provided. In addition, the Worker’s Compensation Act of 1906 forced employers to compensate those injured at work.
In 1909, William Beveridge set up a Labour Exchanges scheme, which provided the unemployed with work. Part II of the National Insurance Act added to the assistance given to those out work by providing an unemployment benefit, which was once again a contributory scheme with the worker, employer and government all contributing. In 1906, the Taff Vale decision was reversed and in 1908, miner’s hours were restricted to eight and a half per day. In 1909, the Trade Boards Act provided protection for exploited workers in sweated labour. We can see that in these reforms the New Liberal values had definitely replaced the Gladstonian Liberal ones, as such levels of state intervention had never been seen before.
The reverse of this however could also be true, and Pugh argues that really the government hadn’t moved on from old Victorian values. He says that ‘the 1911 National Insurance Act reflected Victorian self-help traditions’ and so it wasn’t radical at all. Watts argues that some ministers didn’t move away from old Gladstonian ideals; Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Asquith were themselves quite Gladstonian in their views. He argues that they still wanted minimum government intervention, and social legislation was only implemented where necessary, while many areas remained unreformed. In addition, the idea of using taxation for social reform was not new, as only a few years before, Joseph Chamberlain had wanted to do the same thing using foreign tariffs in his plan for tariff reform.
There was also a limited scope within the reforms; strict criteria were placed on the Old Age Pensions and National Insurance Act, so that not everybody who was old, ill or unemployed could benefit from the schemes. You had to over 70, with an income of under £31 having lived in Britain for the last 20 years to be eligible for a pension, while only those in certain jobs benefited from unemployment benefit and the Trade Boards Act only covered the sweated trades, a very small sector in industry. The amount of sick pay and unemployment benefit paid was barely enough to support a family and worker’s families were not entitled to the free medical treatment.
Although the party did adapt New Liberalism in the years leading up to 1906, it was really only Lloyd George and Churchill who were fully committed to reform and other ministers showed little interest. Searle argues that Lloyd George and Churchill were only introducing reforms for political motives and not as they themselves claimed, for their sympathy for the general public. He argues that they were just trying to address the issue of the condition of Britain raised by the Boer War and the National Efficiency debate. With the rise of the Labour Party, they needed to attract as much support as possible, and they hoped that the reforms would please both the middle and working classes. We can see that between 1906 and 1908 not much legislation was introduced, but the rate sped up considerably after 1908 when Lloyd George and Churchill took up more prominent positions in parliament. After 1911’s National Insurance Act the impetus was relaxed as if Churchill and Lloyd George had achieved their goals and didn’t want to take it any further. So, in fact it could be thought that the reforms were just a conservative response to a more radical left.
In my opinion, the reforms were radical in the sense that the government had acknowledged that there was a problem and they started to do something about it, and were able to change people’s lives. However, they were only small steps to begin with, laying the foundations for a welfare state, making sure all the necessary measures had been taken. As Churchill said, they didn’t want to take the ‘toiler to dry land, but just strap a lifebelt around them’.
