Derek Fraser

Education and Welfare

That there was a social problem of education in the period following the Industrial Revolution was, as in the field of public health, the result of the distribution of wealth in English society. For those who could afford to pay the fees there was an educational provision leading to the universities, but for the mass of society there was a deficiency of educational opportunity. The rich could buy themselves out of the problems of squalor and ignorance, the poor could not and the state played little role in education. There were indeed only three ways of getting a state education, by being a cadet, a felon or a pauper, since the army, prison and workhouse did provide some schooling. For the rest there was the occasional attendance at charity or endowed schools supported by subscription, or dame schools, some of which were no more than childminding establishments.

The evolution of the British welfare state : a history of social policy since the Industrial Revolution

List of Tables - Preface - Preface to the Second Edition - Preface to the Third Edition - Acknowledgements - Select Time Chart - Foreword: Perspectives on the History of Welfare - Introduction - The Poor Law - Public Health - Education and Welfare - Laissez-faire and State Intervention in the Mid-Nineteenth Century - The Growing Awareness of Poverty - Liberal Social Policy, 1905-14 - Politics and Policy, 1914-39 - War and Welfare in the 1940s - Welfare State - The First Half Century - Documentary Appendix - Notes and References - Select Bibliography - Index

The Factory Question

CHILD labour was not the creation of the Industrial Revolution. Many a medieval tapestry, depicting children at work, gives the lie to the idea of a ‘Merrie England’ of feudal times when children laboured not at all. Behind closed doors the domestic system hid much unseen exploitation of children, for in many ways parents were the severest taskmasters of all. There is no real case to support the hostile anti-industrial view in the early nineteenth century which invented, most notably in the words of Engels, a golden age of rural bliss in pre-industrial society : ′The workers enjoyed a comfortable and peaceful existence ... they were not forced to work excessive hours .... Children grew up in the open air of the countryside and if they were old enough to help their parents work this was only an occasional employment and there was no question of an 8 or 12 hour day.

Politics and Policy 1914-39

THE First World War had a profound influence upon British society, for quite simply it swept away a whole world and created a new one. Things would never be quite the same and the Edwardian epoch became a vision of the distant past as though a great chasm separated 1918 from 1914. This war was in fact the greatest watershed of modem British history. However, the effects of total war in the twentieth century have been as much concerned with accelerating as with diverting the course of social policy. In very significant ways the stress of fighting the First World War accentuated developments which were already discernible in the pre-war years. The crucial developments in the much-expanded role of the state paralleled themes of the Edwardian age in two important respects. First, the greatest single stimulus to the enlargement of the function of the state was national defence. As we shall see, the quest for national security in the war effort caused the state to traverse fields very remote from military strategy. This was in effect a massive extension of the whole national efficiency movement of the early years of the century. Then, prospective fears for national efficiency motivated much pre-war social policy; now, the practical needs of self-defence dictated a greater amount of state intervention, what the Manchester Guardian called ‘War Socialism’. The break between Asquith and Lloyd George in December 1916 may be viewed in many ways, personal, political, or military, but perhaps the most significant underlying development was the growth of a strong collectivist urge which Asquith reluctantly accepted but which Lloyd George welcomed and carried forward.

The Inter-War Years

The First World War had a profound influence upon British society, for quite simply it swept away a whole world and created a new one. Things would never be quite the same and the Edwardian epoch became a vision of the distant past as though a great chasm separated 1918 from 1914. This war was in fact the greatest watershed of modern British history. However, the effects of total war in the twentieth century have been as much concerned with accelerating as with diverting the course of social policy. In very significant ways the stress of fighting the First World War accentuated developments which were already discernible in the prewar years. The crucial developments in the much-expanded role of the state paralleled themes of the Edwardian age in two important respects. First, the greatest single stimulus to the enlargement of the function of the state was national defence. As we shall see, the quest for national security in the war effort caused the state to traverse fields very remote from military strategy. This was in effect a massive extension of the whole national efficiency movement of the early years of the century. Then, prospective fears for national efficiency motivated much pre-war social policy; now, the practical needs of self-defence dictated a greater amount of state intervention, what the Manchester Guardian called ‘War Socialism’.

War and Welfare in the 1940s

IF the essential theme of the 1930s had been selectivity, that of the 1940s was universalism. That specious universalism which in 1931 had required the unemployed to share in the national sacrifice by a 10 per cent cut in income did not hide the fact that society and social policy were riddled with arbitrary distinctions and selective treatment. Just as unemployment was uneven in its impact, making it an experience depressingly familiar to specific regions and industries, so too the evolving services were uneven in coverage. Accidents of classification vitally affected the nature and scope of the services available. Insured workers were covered for unemployment, sickness, medical, old age, widows’ and orphans’ benefits, non-insured workers were not; insured workers had free access to a doctor, their families did not; a sick man received less financial aid during his incapacity for work than one who was unemployed; the unemployed were selectively treated, for twenty-six weeks by the insurance scheme, then by the U.A.B., but a minority of 4o,ooo ablebodied msn who were technically not normally in insurable occupations were left with the Poor Law; non-contributory pensioners over seventy were subjected to a means test, contributory pensioners were not. Common social conditions did not produce common social security benefits as classification and technical qualifications had usurped need as the determining factor. The war was to have decisive influence in producing a common experience and universal treatment for it. George v had reiterated the need to re-create the political will to solve gigantic problems which had characterised the years 1914-18 and had advised Lloyd George in 1921 and Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 to tackle unemployment as though it were a crisis of war proportions. The Second World War did in fact generate the political and social determination to overcome enormous difficulties, and in its wake the spirit and practice of universalism affected the course of social policy.

The Urban History Masquerade: Recent Trends in the Study of English Urban Development

The Historical Journal / Volume 27 / Issue 01 / March 1984, pp 253 264 DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00017775, Published online: 11 February 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0018246X00017775 How to cite this article: Derek Fraser (1984). The Urban History Masquerade: Recent Trends in the Study of English Urban Development. The Historical Journal, 27, pp 253-264 doi:10.1017/ S0018246X00017775 Request Permissions : Click here

Politics and the Victorian City

Urban history progresses through the work of many different types of historian. Some think of themselves as primarily urban historians, the zealots in a novel faith. Others explore problems that happen to have occurred in cities, potential converts by association. Still more have an ambit that is society-wide and ‘pass through’ cities haphazardly, the casual visitors. All have something to say to us. This is especially true in the study of urban politics, where until recently it has been the ‘politics’ and not the ‘urban’ which has been the point of focus. The student of urban politics may be confronted with books on re- ligion, class, values, institutions and political systems, none of which may be primarily urban in orientation. But all of them may be grist to his mill.

The highway surveyors

This review of parochial and township institutions may be concluded by a brief glance at the political role of the boards of surveyors of highways. The highway surveyor was the least attractive of the local offices of parish administration and in view of its relatively low status did not normally command any great political interest. However, the surveyors were responsible for levying highway rates and where public expenditure was involved there was some potential popular concern. Whereas churchwardens were to a large extent prevented from levying rates during the early Victorian years, the surveyors continued to spend public funds well into mid-century. Three West Riding examples, those of Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield, illustrate the ways in which even this humble office could become politicized. In Bradford the highway surveyors were sucked into an all-embracing party political battle for total local control. Leeds provided a case study of political interest generated by men whose social status made access to superior offices difficult Finally Sheffield was perhaps a unique case in using the highway surveyors as the lynch-pin of a theory of local self-government.

Conclusion: Urban politics in modern England

The structure of politics in English provincial metropolises in the mid-nineteenth century was the product of the interaction between the institutional and social structure of Victorian urban communities. The pattern and boundaries of politics in Victorian cities were determined by a struggle for control between social groups, a conflict over the exercise of power in urban society. Such political battles were fought across a wide range of battlefields which it has been the object of this study to identify and characterize. The analysis has rested upon the discovery and exploration of four levels of political activity within the urban community. The foundations of the Victorian urban political system were to be found in the minor parochial and township institutions of city life. Growing out of the pre-industrial vestry, the churchwardens, boards of guardians, improvement commissions and highway surveyors struggled with the problems of the new urban milieu. These posts carried intrinsic authority and were further politicized by becoming either focal points in a wider struggle for power or agents for implementing a wider political (often reform) objective. Many political activists who served their apprenticeship in these minor offices looked to town councils as the next level in the urban hierarchy and it was widely believed that councils were natural political institutions.