Liberal Reforms Essay Research Paper In this

Liberal Reforms Essay, Research Paper

In this essay I will show to what extent the Liberal Government of 1906 to 1914 set up a welfare state in Britain, why they were so concerned with the health of the nation, what reforms they introduced in order to improve the nation s health and why this was a period of major reform in Britain.

A welfare state is a state with social services controlled or financed by the Government. These service aim to protect society s weakest members from the cradle to the grave. As Beveriage described it, a welfare state is the provision of services for the prevention of disease, squalor, want, idleness and ignorance . (1)

The social reforms seemed to run counter to the laissez-faire individualist ideology of the nineteenth century Liberal party. This held to the view that the less state regulation the better. In the 1906 general election the Liberal party won a landslide victory on the basis, not of a programme of social reform, but in defence of free trade. This was a traditional Liberal policy, which was challenged by the unionist s adoption of tariff reform or protection as a response to the rise of foreign competition. The Liberals success was due to the identification in the public mind of free trade with cheap food.

For a variety of reasons it seems likely that whichever party had won the 1906 election, a number of social reforms would have been passed. There were changing attitudes to poverty. Instead of moral judgements which attributed poverty to idleness or drunkenness there was an increasing acceptance of economic and environmental explanations.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a series of social enquires showed the extent of poverty in Britain. In particular the social surveys of Booth and Rowntree helped to change attitudes. Charles Booth, a wealthy ship owner, carried out between 1886 and 1903 an immense investigation published in several volumes of The Life and Labour of the People of London . Booth s sources of information included the census, school board attendance officer reports, interviews with poor law boards of guardians, teachers, police, sanitary inspectors, trade union officials, charity workers and the clergy. Booth s original intention was to disprove what he considered to be exaggerated estimates to the extent of poverty in London. In fact his findings confirmed these estimates to be lower than to the actual level of poverty in the capital. Booth showed that thirty per cent of the population of London were living below the poverty line , a minimum income of between eighteen and twenty-one shillings per week for a family with three children was the case for the majority.

Seebohm Rowntree s Poverty: A Study of Town Life was influence by Booth s work. Rowntree investigated his own city of York. Taking Booth s idea of the poverty line he went on to distinguish between primary and secondary poverty. Primary poverty existed where income was insufficient to meet basic needs; Secondary poverty was where the income was sufficient but was misspent so as to produce poverty. Rowntree identified the main causes of primary poverty as low wages, large families, unemployment, old age or the death of the chief wage earner. His findings that nearly twenty-eight per cent of York s population were living in poverty confirmed Booth s figures for London.

Public conscience was also shocked by the fact that thirty-four per cent of recruits for military service in the Boer War failed to meet the army s standard of height, weight and eyesight, at a rejection rate of one in three. The Boer War led to a campaign for national efficiency, which flourished at the turn of the century. This reflected concern at the slower growth of the economy and the relative decline in industrial production compared with Germany and the United States. Politicians like Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Rosebery expressed this concern. It was argued that national efficiency and imperial strength required a better-educated and healthier population. Welfare services would contribute to the efficiency of the workers. The idea of national efficiency became part of the language of the time and many found it reasonable to express their support for social measures in such terms.

The Liberal Government addressed the problem of disease and the overall poor health of the nation by passing several bills, each aiming to protect the vulnerable members of society, such as the children. In 1907 the Medical Inspectors Act dealt particularly with the problem of disease in schools. Free medical inspections took place following the Act, but although the Act highlighted the ill health of the nations children, it did nothing to alleviate the problem, for most parents could not afford medical treatment and the government did not offer it. Part one of the National Insurance Acts of 1911 provided health insurance for workers who earned less the one hundred and sixty pounds annually. This Act was triggered both by the issue of national deficiency and from the tuberculosis outbreak which was claiming seventy-five thousand lives each year. Though this Act was significant in that it was the first time that the Government had offered such insurance it failed to provide for the sick employees family, only the employee himself was covered. Also sickness benefit lessened as time passed and after twenty-six weeks it was infinitesimal. The f