Contents

History of the welfare state in the United Kingdom

Liberal reforms 1908-1914

The Liberal Party under Henry Campbell-Bannerman rallied Liberals around the traditional platform of free trade and land reform and led them to the greatest electoral victory in Liberal Party history.^[1] The Prime Minister was overshadowed by his frontbench, most notably H. H. Asquith at the Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and was succeeded by Asquith. He stepped up the government's radicalism, especially in the "People's Budget" of 1909 that proposed to fund expanded social welfare programmes with new taxes on land and high incomes. It was blocked by the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, but eventually became law in April 1910.

Almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the "new liberalism", which advocated government action to improve people's lives.^[2]

Liberals in 1906–1911 passed major legislation designed to reform politics and society, such as the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and the beginnings of the welfare state, as well as curtailing the power of the House of Lords. Women's suffrage was not on the Liberal agenda.^[3] There were numerous major reforms helping labour, typified by the Trade Boards Act 1909 that set minimum wages in certain trades with the history of "sweated" or "sweatshop" rates of especially low wages, because of surplus of available workers, the presence of women workers, or the lack of skills.^[4]

At first it applied to four industries: chain-making, ready-made tailoring, paper-box making, and the machine-made lace and finishing trade.^[4] It was later expanded to coal mining and then to other industries with preponderance of unskilled manual labour by the Trade Boards Act 1918. Under the leadership of David Lloyd George Liberals extended minimum wages to farm workers.^[5]

See also

• Liberal welfare reforms
• Welfare state in the United Kingdom

Notes

Further reading

• Abel-Smith, Brian. "The Beveridge Report: Its origins" International Social Security Review 45#1 (1992) 5–16. online
• Bruce, Maurice. The Coming of the Welfare State (1966) online
• Fraser, Derek. The evolution of the British welfare state: a history of social policy since the Industrial Revolution (2nd ed. 1984).
• Gilbert, Bentley B. The Evolution Of National Insurance In Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (1966). online
• Gilbert, Bentley B. "Winston Churchill versus the Webbs: The origins of British unemployment insurance." American Historical Review 71.3 (1966): 846-862. online
• Harris, Bernard. The origins of the British welfare state: social welfare in England and Wales, 1800–1945 (Palgrave, 2004).
• Harris, Jose. Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy, 1886-1914 (1972)
• Hay, Roy.『Employers and social policy in Britain: The evolution of welfare legislation, 1905–14.』Social History 2.4 (1977): 435–55.
• Hay, James Roy. Origins of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, 1906–14 (1975) 78pp full text online
• Hellwig, Timothy T. "The origins of unemployment insurance in Britain: A cross-class alliance approach." Social Science History 29.1 (2005): 107-136. online
• Hill, Michael J. The welfare state in Britain : a political history since 1945 (1993) online
• Hudson, John, et al.『Exploring public attitudes to welfare over the Longue Durée: Re‐examination of survey evidence from Beveridge, Beatlemania, Blair and beyond.』Social Policy & Administration 50.6 (2016): 691-711. online
• Jones, Margaret, and Rodney Lowe, eds. From Beveridge to Blair: the first fifty years of Britain's welfare state 1948-98 (Manchester UP, 2002). online
• Katselidis, Ioannis A. "Unemployment and Labour Market Policy in British Economic Thought during the Late Victorian and Edwardian Era (1885-1914)." History of economic ideas 24#1 (2016): 57-82.
• Kelso, Patrick Winston. "Winston Churchill and Social Reform." (2006) online.
• Laybourn Keith. The Evolution of British Social Policy and the Welfare State, c. 1800–1993 (Keele University Press. 1995). online
• Levine-Clark, Marjorie. Unemployment, Welfare, and Masculine Citizenship: So Much Honest Poverty in Britain, 1870–1930 (Springer, 2015).
• Lowe, Rodney. "The Second World War, consensus, and the foundation of the welfare state." Twentieth Century British History 1.2 (1990): 152-182.
• Marshall, T. H.Social policy in the twentieth century. (5th ed. Unwin Hyman, 1985) online
• Matsunaga, Tomoari. "The Origins of Unemployment Insurance in Edwardian Britain." Journal of Policy History 29.4 (2017): 614-639.
• Mommsen, Wolfgang J., and Wolfgang Mock, eds. The emergence of the welfare state in Britain and Germany, 1850–1950 (Taylor & Francis, 1981).
• Sullivan, Michael. The development of the British welfare state (1996)
• Weiler, Peter. The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914 (Routledge, 2016).
• Welshman John. Underclass: A History of the Excluded, 1880–2000 (2006) excerpt
• Whiteside, Noel. "The Beveridge Report and Its Implementation: a Revolutionary Project?" Histoire@Politique 2014#3 (n° 24), pp.24–37. DOI 10.3917/hp.024.0024

External links

• Text of the Beveridge Report
• The Welfare State – Never Ending Reform Brief history of the Welfare State by Frank Field (BBC website)