Why did the Liberals introduce some social reforms in the period 1906-1914?
In January 1906 the Liberals won a landslide victory winning nearly 400 seats compared to the Conservatives 157. This was a new era for the Liberal party and the country, the government was no longer dominated by of wealthy landowners and aristocrats but contained new radical thinking Liberals. This government was no longer to pursue laissez faire policies as the Gladstonian Liberals had but was to start a new era of social reform. But why did the Liberals decide to pursue this policy of new liberalism and take the first steps to socially reform Britain?
There were mixed motives within the Liberal party for carrying out these social reforms. The attitudes to the poor were now changing throughout the country, thanks to the research of people such as Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree people no longer believed that the poor were in poverty just because they were lazy but because of low wages and large families that they could not afford. It was revealed that up to 30% of the population were living in poverty and some liberals felt this was socially unjust. The attitudes of the people were changing as well. More ordinary people were becoming literate and so a new type of media was emerging to cater for these people. Papers such as the Mirror were putting political points across in language the average working class person could understand and so awareness of how the poor were being treated again was increasing.This feeling of unfairness was amplified by a socialist group known as the Fabians these were a group of socialist middle class intellectuals who believed in socialism but not violence and so tried to pressurise the Liberals into accepting socialism. Around the turn of the century there was also a revival in the number of church goers as a result of this there was an increase in Christian compassion this is shown particularly in the formation of the Salvation Army and is yet another example of how attitudes to the poor were changing.
