T HE BIRTH O F T HE WE LF A RE

ST AT E

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL POLICY

SESSION 2, FRAMING LECTURE 1 OF 2
DR JENNIE BRISTOW
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY THE WELFARE
STATE?
• William Beveridge’s famous report on the need for comprehensive social security reform, published in
1942 (‘The Beveridge Report’) described the Five Giant Social Evils that had undermined British society
before the war:
– ‘He argued that it was in the interests of all citizens to remove these evils from British society, and it was the duty of the
state, as the representative body of all citizens, to act to do this.’ (Alcock 2016, pp. 9-10)
BEVERIDGE’S ‘FIVE GIANT SOCIAL EVILS’

Disease Squalor
Ignorance

Idleness

Want
WHAT WAS DONE TO COMBAT THE
FIVE GIANT SOCIAL EVILS?
• Free education up to age 15 (later 16), to combat ignorance; • A national health service (NHS) free at the point of
use, to combat disease;

• Public housing for all citizens to rent, to combat

squalor;
• State commitment to securing full employment, to combat idleness;

• National insurance benefits for all in need, to

combat want.
CONSENSUS ON STATE WELFARE

• ‘All of these required the development of major state services for citizens and they resulted in a major extension
of state responsibility – and state expenditure. The reforms were not only supported by the Labour government,
however; indeed, the state education plans were introduced by a Conservative member of the wartime coalition
government (R. A. Butler) in 1944. And the Conservative governments that followed in the 1950s supported the spirit
of the reforms and maintained their basic structure. This cross-party consensus on state welfare was so strong that it
even acquired an acronym – Butskellism – comprising the names of the Labour Chancellor (Gaitskell) and his
Conservative successor (Butler).’ (Alcock 2016, p. 10, my emphasis.)
BUT HOW DID WE GET TO THE
BEVERIDGE REFORMS?
• Many factors influenced the birth of the welfare state:
– Social and economic developments
• Urbanisation and industrialisation
– Existing forms of welfare provision
• The Poor Laws and their inadequacy
– Economic crises and wars
• Boer War (1899-1902); First World War, (1914-18); the Great Depression, the Second World War (1939-45)
– Political tensions and unrest
• Communism and the Russian Revolution
• National Socialism in Germany
• The Labour movement in Britain
INDUSTRIALISATION AND
URBANISATION
• ‘In the late eighteenth century, the vast majority of British people still lived in small towns and
villages. It has been estimated that … 30.9 per cent of the population of England and Wales
lived in towns containing more than 5,000 inhabitants in 1801… In 1901, 78 per cent of the
population of England and Wales lived in towns containing more than 2,500 inhabitants. The
number of people in England, Scotland, and Wales increased from 10.5 million to 37 million
over the course of the century.’ (Harris 2016 p.114)
FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND CHARITIES

• ‘Throughout this period, families, friends, and neighbours played a central role in meeting
social needs. Many people also relied on the support of charities and mutual-aid organisations,
often providing local, spontaneous and independent support, which left little trace in official
records. More institutional forms of charity also helped to build bridges between different
social groups, creating an infrastructure of support for education and healthcare, developing
different forms of housing provision, and giving financial and other kinds of support during
periods of crisis.’ (Harris 2016, p.114)
THE POOR LAWS

• ‘Although several authors have argued that the development of state welfare was directly related to the process of industrialisation, the
earliest form of statutory welfare in Britain predated the emergence of an industrial society by more than two centuries.’ (Harris
2016, p.114)
• Late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Poor Laws passed allowing local magistrates to:
– Punish vagrants and return them to their own homes
– Issue licences to ‘deserving paupers’ to enable them to beg
– Outlaw ‘indiscriminate almsgiving’ and set vagabonds to work
– Make arrangements for the apprenticeship of pauper children
– Establish weekly collections for the relief of the ‘impotent poor’.
• Elizabethan Poor Laws of 1597 and 1601 gave the churchwardens and overseers of each parish the power to:
– Levy a tax, or poor rate, on the local population and use the proceeds to ‘set the poor on work’
– Maintain those who were unable to work
– Board out pauper children as apprentices.
POOR LAW AMENDMENT ACT (1834):
THE ‘NEW POOR LAW’
• ‘In 1832, the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws drew a sharp distinction between indigence – “the state
of a person unable to labour, or unable to obtain, in return for his labour, the means of subsistence” – and
poverty, which was “the state of one who, in order to obtain a mere subsistence, is forced to have recourse
to labour.. In order to deter members of the second group from seeking relief, it recommended the
introduction of a workhouse test. It argued that if relief was provided only within a “well-regulated
workhouse,” this would deter those who were capable of supporting themselves from seeking relief.’
• ‘Whilst many people thought that the New Poor Law was too harsh and was failing in its duty to provide
for the most vulnerable, others believed that the original principles of the 1834 reform had been diluted and
that its deterrent functions were being undermined by “indiscriminate” charity… However… other
evidence suggested that approaches to poverty were moving in a different direction.’ (Harris 2016, p. 115)
TURN OF THE 20 CENTURY TH

• [M]any Victorians approached the start of the new century with growing unease. During the 1880s and 1890s,
surveys by two independent researchers, Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree, appeared to show that the
extent of poverty was much greater than previously thought, and Rowntree’s findings in particular helped
to fuel concern that a significant proportion of the working-class population was living below the
standard of “merely physical efficiency”. These fears were compounded by suggestions that the health of the
population was being undermined by continuing urbanisation and by the high proportion of prospective army
recruits who were rejected on the grounds of physical unfitness. The established political parties – the Liberals
and Conservatives – faced a growing challenge from an increasingly organised labour movement… and
concern over Britain’s failure to keep pace with the emerging economic powers of Germany and the
United States continued to mount. Many of these anxieties were reflected in the background to the new
welfare measures which the Liberal government introduced after 1906.’ (Harris 2016, p.117)
QUESTIONS

• Why was industrialisation and urbanisation significant in the need for new forms of welfare
provision?
• What are the limits of a welfare approach that relies on family and friends?
• What did the ‘workhouse test’ in the New Poor Law seek to achieve?
• What was the significance of the approach to poverty taken by Booth and Rowntree?