poor houses

Discuss some of the factors which led to the emergence of the modern welfare state in the 40s

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23/02/2011

The emergence of the welfare state in Britain is a much discussed topic in other countries too since despite not being the first or the most extreme application of universal provision to a state, it has undoubtedly been characterised by the pioneering “cradle to the grave” vision that led Beveridge and the Fabians to enhance the pre-existing minimal provisions such as David Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act.  In order to understand how the welfare state came to be thought, widely accepted and finally brought to life in the 1940s I am going to analyse the role and nature of the pre-existing provisions by the Poor Laws and the shift that recession, the Napoleonic wars and industrialisation brought to the abrupt changes of the 1834 reform act. Pointing out the reasons and extent to which the Poor Laws became felt as unpopular and outdated, and comparing the 1834 restricting changes with the 1940s inclusive ones, I am going to draw a conclusion about social policy and the welfare state.

The Poor Laws date as far back as 1351 when they were thought as a measure against vagrancy rather than a relief for those in need (Fraser, 1985:31). They attained the latter meaning with the Tudor acts of 1598 and 1601 also known as the 43rd of Elizabeth (Fraser, 1985: 32). Substantially parishes were appointed to provide for poor relief, which was to be administered depending on the ability to work of the destitutes. The paupers were thus divided into three categories based on their conditions: the impotent were to be helped placing them in ‘poor houses’, the able bodied were to work in workhouses if they were adults and to become apprentices in some trade if they were children. Finally, those able bodied who were idle ‘by choice’ were to be punished in a ‘house of correction’ (Fraser 1985:33). This form of stigmatisation of the undeserving, not only brought with it the seed for future means-testing and the debate about merit that still applies today but made Poor Laws quite unpopular, particularly after the reform act of 1834. Although Poor Laws are mainly remembered for their local faults in deliverance (Harris, 2007:19), masterly pictured in works of contemporary writers such as Charles Dickens, the practical issues of concern at the time seemed to be the perception of expenditure and distribution, questioned by administrators, economists and if we are to give credit to testimonies of the later Poor Law Commission, poor alike who, fearful that undeserving individuals might stir away relief from them, seemed to favour means-testing (Harris, 2007:29). The dispute about merit harshened in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, a period marked by a drastic economic downturn, an exceptional demographic boom (the population doubled) and  popular discontent that culminated in social agitations such as the Peterloo massacre or the Swing Riots. Economists, theorists, Treasury officials such as Ricardo, Smith, Malthus, Nassau and Chadwick saw in the Tudor Poor Law and especially in the Speenhamland system of allowances the reason for population growth, economic and social distress (Fraser, 1985:39). From their point of view, the lowest wage of the labourer was being influenced by the highest Poor Law provision and this mechanism was interfering with the labour market. These ideas played an important role in influencing the harsh 1834 reform act. Seeing the problem from the opposite perspective, it could have been argued that wages were too low since they matched the provision of relief (Fraser, 1985:42-43) but this was not the historical trend of that time.  Had Malthusian abolitionists won the dispute about Poor Law inutility, the social consequences might had been far worse, but since their dawn Poor Laws had a social stability function (Fraser, 1985:31) that could not be possibly challenged to the full extent especially in times when social stability was threatened by a suffering economy and a widespread popular dissatisfaction.

The convincement that less expenditure of poor relief would benefit the economy got the Government to halve it in 60 years between 1830 and 1890 and to effectively raise wages giving the pound a long lasting stability until 1914 (Harris, 2007:21) but economic stability brought with it bitter social consequences to those in poverty. Because The 1834 reform act did not only aim at cutting the expenditure but stressed the ‘self-help’ concept, it targeted both the restriction of entitlement to relief which theoretically became available for indigents (whose level of subsistence was to be below the lowest ‘free’ labourer) only, and the transformation of workhouses into unpleasant places to be. What was born as a measure to attenuate poverty in the Tudor rural economy (Harris, 2007:21) soon became something to avoid falling into in the growing industrialised society. The ban on outdoor relief was never effectively put into place, even if the reform brought about a certain degree of centralisation (Feldman, 2002:91; Fraser 1985:51), as Fraser points out: ‘The central Poor Law Commission had very limited powers when faced with a union that failed to co-operate’ (1985:51). In the Commission’s view, cutting outdoor relief was also a mean to support the migration from poor rural areas in the south where work was scarce, to industrialised ones, in the north of England (Feldman, 2002:92). In order to achieve this goal, though, the Commission had to repeal the previous Law of Settlement which allowed parishes to remove ‘strangers’ (be they immigrants, of other belief or migrants)  and send them back to their parish or country of origin very easily. This somehow forced local authorities to provide some support, for example the Irish who emigrated during the Great Famine doubled in number (Feldman, 2002:93) but the quality of this support, being largely up to the local administrators and flawed by their prejudices was often more punitive than the central legislator had intended (Feldman, 2009:101). What the Commission failed to take into account in encouraging social movement, was the instability of manufacturing labour, that had peaks and lows for which the working houses were an inappropriate, insufficient and counterproductive measure.

Throughout the second part of the 19th century, there were reviews in administration: the Commission was replaced first by the Poor Board in 1847 and in 1871, the Local Government Board took over. This evolution in delivery was partly an acknowledgement of failures and limits of the 1834 act and partly an adaptation to the need to convey relief outside of the Poor Laws constriction of self-help. The Commission, though, was not the only ‘self-help’ oriented provider of relief. Quite curiously, Victorian times saw an impressive growth of charities that shared the same vision. Those benevolent givers did not see any contradictions in their delivery of help and the philosophy that wanted the poor proactive in their independency. They instead, based their intervention on fears that extreme poverty might lead to a revolution (such as the French one) and on the patronising vision that one became poor as a consequence of personal failure therefore they saw their provisions as a temporary encouragement to get back on track rather than a final measure to tackle poverty or an interference to the self-help philosophy (Fraser, 1985:130). Humanitarianism was also moved by a ‘conceit’ factor: the publication of names of benefactors, the exhibition of wealth through the architecture of the buildings the charities used, the display of balls and other social network activities which were actually decreasing the budget at disposal for the primary aim of the charity while possibly trying to incite donations, highlighted how motivations and organisational skills of most charities were questionable and naïve (Fraser, 1985:126-131). Eventually in 1869, the Charity Organisation Society (C.O.S.) was created to address the chaotic approach that had characterised the voluntary sector. COS’ thought was, again, in line with the self-help ideology. Helen Bosanquet’s (who was one of the leader of COS) majority report is a clear example of the self-help ideology. Despite this, COS’ practice was based on scientific approach and it proved influential in the way it framed familiar social casework (Fraser, 1985:130).

The beginning of 20th century saw the Liberal electoral victory over the Conservatives in 1905 and in the same year, the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress started to review what was to culminate in 1909 with the presentation of both the minority and majority reports that greatly influenced social policy since (Alcock, 2008:4). A season of much needed reforms was implemented by the government up to 1911: free school meals, the children charter, a basic pension and the National Insurance Act provided the base on which  Beveridge could build up its broader vision of fighting the giant evils. British economy, in the meantime, was shifting from an internationally focused economy based on trade to an internally focused economy based on production (Harris, 2007:23). The Treasury’s faith in the Poor Laws as a mean for stabilizing economy, trembled with the 1930s depression and thus allowed radical economic views such as Keynes’ (who favoured government expenditure in welfare as a mean to come out of the financial downfall) to sink in (Harris, 2007:23). When in 1940 Churchill’s appealed to the nation for endurance and effort, people’s hoped it would be counterbalanced by some form of reward had the war been won (Fraser, 1985:208) and since he never wished for universal welfare provisions to come forward, the Beveridge report in 1942 embodied people’s hopes and rose Labour party to power in the post war years, thus allowing the welfare state to became reality. It has to be said that without the propelling force of a war that directly influenced civilians on a large scale and on British soil, the actual realization of welfare state might have been delayed, nonetheless since the early 20th century, provisions gradually began to be administered outside the Poor Law spectrum, eventually dictating their end. The nature of World war II, the bombings which forced a considerable amount of the population to be evacuated, dangers lying equally on the poor and on the wealthy contributed if not in obliterating, in drastically reducing class division (Fraser, 1985:208) and in changing the conception of ‘need’ that was finally freed from stigma.

Concluding, welfare state has sprung out from the seed of Tudor Poor Law conception of provision as a safety net. None of the systems has proven to be free from faults although they were both successful in addressing their goals for a certain period of time. Welfare state, for example, has proved inefficient in the long run when faced with inflation and has been subjected to means-testing in its history as much as the Poor Laws (Harris, 2007:25-26). The very idea of provisions has historically changed restricting or enlarging its spectrum of action. Economic perspectives seemed to have been pivotal in the fluctuation of targets in the provisions. It is, in a way, logic since wealth is needed in its distribution but seeing the final users of provisions merely as an economic target excludes other perspectives and as in the 1834 reform act, proves to be short-sighted. On the contrary, euphoria about universal targets has proven to be equally naïve about economic factors in the long run. Comparing periods of social stress such as 1834 and its post Napoleonic war financial problems, demographic boom and intermittent unemployment with the 1948 similar post-war struggles, we can see how crucial political decisions can be in the making of stepping stones towards social change or social decay.

References

  • Alcock P., 2008, Social Policy in Britain, 3rd ed., Basingstoke, Palgrave and Macmillan
  • Feldman D.,  2003, Migrants, Immigrants and Welfare from the Old Poor Law to the Welfare State, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, [e-journal] 13 (6)pp.79-104 available through JSTOR, [accessed 05/02/2011, 12:20]
  • Fraser D., 1985, The Evolution of the British Welfare State: a History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed., Basingstoke, Palgrave and Macmillan
  • Harris J., 2007, The aims of social policy: Principles, Poor Laws and welfare states in Hills J., Le Grand  J., Piachaud D. (eds) Making social policy work, Bristol, Policy Press, Part one.