Liberal welfare reforms
The Liberal welfare reforms (1906–1914) were a series of acts of social legislation in the United Kingdom passed by the Liberal Party after the 1906 general election. They represent the Liberal Party's transition rejecting the old laissez-faire policies and enacting interventionist state policies against poverty and thus launching the modern British welfare state. David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill led in designing and passing the reforms, and building nationwide support.
The historian G. R. Searle argues that the reforms had multiple causes, including "the need to fend off the challenge of Labour; pure humanitarianism; the search for electoral popularity; considerations of National Efficiency; and a commitment to a modernised version of welfare capitalism." By implementing the reforms outside the English Poor Laws, the stigma attached to a needy person obtaining relief was also removed. After 1911 Liberals turned to other issues, but never abandoned their support for the welfare programmes.[1]
During the 1906 general election campaign, neither of the two major parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives) made poverty an important election issue and no promises were made to introduce welfare reforms. The Liberals, led first by Henry Campbell-Bannerman and later H. H. Asquith, won a landslide victory and began introducing wide-ranging reforms as soon as they took office.[2]
Previous social legislation
[edit]The Conservative government in office before the Liberals came to power passed the Unemployed Workmen Act 1905 (The Liberals, as noted by one study, did not oppose the bill that produced this legislation.)[3] Slum housing was also cleared for new houses to be built. Much of this legislation was left for local authorities to implement – their attitudes affected whether legislation was fully implemented.[4] The Conservatives passed the Education Act 1902 that provided funds for denominational religious instruction in Church of England and Roman Catholic schools. The Nonconformists, who formed a major Liberal constituency, were outraged at the help to their theological enemies, but failed to repeal it.[5]
Liberal reforms 1906–1914
[edit]Licensing pubs
[edit]A favourite goal of Protestant nonconformists was to sharply reduce the heavy drinking by closing as many pubs as possible.[6] Asquith—although a heavy drinker—took the lead in 1908 by proposing to close about one-third of the 100,000 pubs in England and Wales, with the owners compensated through a new tax on surviving pubs.[7] The brewers controlled the pubs and organised a stiff resistance, supported by the Conservatives, who repeatedly defeated the proposal in the House of Lords. However, the "People's Tax" of 1910 included a stiff tax on pubs, and during the First World War, their hours were sharply restricted from about 18 hours a day to 5+1⁄2. Beer and alcohol consumption fell in half from 1900 to 1920, in part because there were many new leisure opportunities.[8][9]
Education
[edit]Children were provided with free school meals from 1906 onwards; via the Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906. However, many local councils ignored this system, as it was not compulsory for them to provide the free meals and the cost to the council was far greater than was subsidised for. The provision of free school meals was made compulsory in 1914, in which year fourteen million meals per school day were served (compared with nine million per school day in 1910[10]), most of which were free. In 1912, half of all councils in Britain were offering the scheme. Recruitment for the Second Boer War demonstrated the undernourishment and illness among the working classes, and there were fears over future generations being unable to maintain military control of Britain's empire.[11] Also, following an unfavourable report by the Board of Education's inspectors on infant education in 1906, school provision for children under five was restricted (previously, the normal age for the entry of working-class children into full-time education had been three).[12]
In 1906 a major education bill failed to pass, to the annoyance of Nonconformists Protestants who were angry that since the Education Act 1902 local rates were used to support Church of England schools. Liberals sought to limit religious teaching in all schools to vague nondenominational Christianity (as already required in state schools under the Cowper-Temple Clause of the Elementary Education Act 1870). Under the proposal many Anglicans and Catholics would lose the right to use their schools to teach their religion to their children. The House of Lords, where the Liberals were outnumbered 5 to 1, rewrote the bill to make it more favourable to the Anglicans, so no compromise was possible.[13][14] The Nonconformists had been a major factor in the Liberal landslide of 1906, and they dominated the Liberal front bench. But the bitter defeat of their highest priority now became a factor in their loss of enthusiasm for the Liberal Party, and played a key role in its decline.[15]
Nevertheless, a few uncontroversial minor education bills did become law. The Education (Administrative Provisions) Act 1907 introduced what became known as the Free Place System. The Regulations for Secondary Schools issued that year authorised the payment of a £5 per head grant for each pupil between the ages of 12 and 18, and schools had to conform to certain requirements in order to attain this grant. Schools could not restrict admission to pupils belonging to particular religious denominations, governing bodies had to be reconstituted to include a number of representative governors (some of whom represented the LEA), and at least 25% of the annual intake should be pupils from elementary schools. The act also provided local education authorities (LEAs) with the power to acquire land for constructing new secondary schools, which led to the coming into being of many county and municipal secondary schools.[16]
In 1907 the number of free scholarship places in secondary schools was increased. If working-class pupils passed a scholarship examination, then their fees would be paid for them by the Local Education Authority. One-quarter of places in most secondary schools would be reserved for scholarship pupils. Bright working-class children were therefore provided with the opportunity to climb "the educational ladder", while for those pupils who failed the scholarship exam, some LEAs had "Central Schools" which provided a practically based curriculum for children between the ages of 11 and 15.[17] Professional training was improved, while support was also provided for 150 schools for mothers, while classes in domestic economy were encouraged and grants were provided for day nurseries. I addition, the normal allowance for teachers was doubled under the Elementary School Teachers' Superannuation Act 1912, while the War Service Superannuation Act 1913 made war service (as noted by one study) “equivalent to teaching for superannuation entitlement.”[18]
The Education (Scotland) Act 1908 enforced medical inspection, free books and travel, free meals and clothing grants, and some bursaries.[19] The Irish Universities Act 1908 gave to Roman Catholics new higher education facilities which they had lacked for centuries.[20] The Education (Choice of Employment) Act 1910 enabled local authorities to provide vocational guidance for school-leavers, with the Board of Education providing grants to authorities from 1911 onwards to carry out this purpose. By mid-1912, however, only forty-one local authorities had responded.[12] The Public Libraries (Art Galleries in County Boroughs) (Ireland) Act 1911 empowered Dublin and other county councils to raise a half-penny rate for the support of art galleries,[21] In 1913, the status of day technical classes was raised to that of junior technical schools.[16] In 1914, an Elementary Education (Provision of Meals) Act was passed that legalised (as one study has noted) “the provision of meals during holidays and other days when the schools were not open” and also increased the expenditure limit on school meals.[22]
Women and children
[edit]The Notification of Births Act 1907 sought to quantify and analyse the causes of (and ultimately further reduce) infant mortality