Assess The Effectiveness Of The Liberal Reforms

During 1906-12 when the Liberal Party were in power started the Liberal Reforms, which were several programmes with the intent to help British citizens living in poverty. There is a debate amongst historians whether or not the Liberal Reforms were effective and helped the people living in poverty. The quote from the historian Martin Pugh suggests that the reforms were not introduced to create a welfare state but only focusing on solving specific problems that poor people have faced. There are other interpretations that further support Pugh’s interpretations and there are interpretations that go against Pugh’s interpretation.
There were acts of parliament that were trying to help the elderly and the main one was Old Age Pension in 1908 which
gave citizens who were over seventy and had wage less than 10 shillings, 5 shillings per week and gave citizens 1 shilling a week for citizens with income less than 12 shillings (Hill, 1985). A source from a woman named Flora Thompson, who was a worker in the Post Office handing the elderly their pensions, from her trilogy ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’ published in 1939. The source shows how the Liberal Reforms were successful for the elderly as when they received the money they had “tears of gratitude” and exclaimed “’God Bless that Lord George!’” (Walsh, n.d.).
This shows that the elderly who did receive pensions were grateful and happy that they received pensions as the struggles they faced before getting received was solved to an extent and to further show their gratitude they also treated Flora by handing her flowers (Walsh, n.d.). The positive attitude the elderly had towards pensions showed how many people were suffering from poverty before the Liberal Reforms because the money that the elderly received was not much, however it did help them, and they felt that they were rich because of it (Walsh, n.d.). According to Walsh, that because of the Old Age Pension decreased the number of elderly people who were dependent to charity or workhouses dramatically. However, there was still thousands of elderlies who were dependent on workhouses as they were usually the ones who does not have family and the pensions were not enough for them to pay for basic needs (Walsh, n.d.). Another problem with the Old Age Pension was that it was expensive for the government, shown with a source that is from a government document which shows an estimate on how much pensions would
cost by the year of 1911-12 and it shows it was an estimate of £12,415,000 (Walsh, n.d.). A source that shows an interpretation which was against the actions that the Liberals have done for the elderly was from a memoir of Joseph Clynes, who was an MP for the Labour Party, and was published in 1937. The source shows that he thought that the reasons why the Liberals did anything for the elderly in the first place was because they were threatened by the popularity of the Labour Party and wanted to get more votes from the poor and still wanted to have the reputation of being the party that cared for the working class (Simkins, 2016). This shows that Clynes thought the Liberals did not have good intentions with the reforms and that if Labour were in power they would have done more to help the elderly within the working class shown with, “Labour wanted much more radical action” (Simkins, 2016).
When it came to children the Liberal Reforms had many acts to help children such as school meals and medical inspection (Wood, 2002).
Wood points out that the act that provided poor children to have school meals was not successful when it was passed, and this is because it was not mandatory for the schools to provide the meals for those children and because of that there were many local authorities who made the decision to not provide meals (Wood, 2002). That choice was continuously made to the point where half of England and Wales went against that act (Wood, 2002). In 1914, the government decided to help pay for the cost to solve this problem as they realised that one of the main reasons why some authorities decided to not provide free school meals for the poor children was because how much it would cost for them (Wood, 2002). The main problems with this act is that it was hard to determine who should be provided with school meals, as there were some parents who would refuse to pay for the school meals and led to all children to get free meals (Wood, 2000). There is a source from Sir Arthur Clay which shows his argument for being against providing school meals for children and it is that it would teach the children how to not be responsible shown with the quote “… the evasion of responsibility which will never be forgotten” and it is beneficial for the parents as it will give them less self-reliance because the government would be providing for the child and not the parent
(Wood, 2002). The positive of this act is that it has made the government acknowledging that even something as little as providing meals for children will help improve the health for the ones who need it, and this will help develop to improve the lives for the ones in need, this is an argument made by the historian Derek Fraser (Wood, 2002). In 1907, it became mandatory for there to have medical inspections to take place in school (Hill, 1985). The successes of this act are that it was able to allow doctors to prevent deformities and diseases and be able to check on them with children early on the disease rather than let to develop and become fatal (Hill, 1985). George Newman, the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, is considered by many historians to be a hero as he has saved more lives the ones the country has lost in national wars (Hill, 1985). However, these inspections were not free until 1912 and there were areas that were inspected more than others which shows that not every child was treated fairly with this act and was not helpful for every child (Walsh, n.d.). Even though there were problems with the medical inspections it was a significant development to the improvements made to Britain’s healthcare system (Wood, 2002).
The Liberal Reforms introduced National Health Insurance in 1911 where it would be mandatory for all workers between the ages of 16 and 70 to have health insurance (Hill, 1985). There was originally opposition towards National Insurance from the British Medical Association shown, from National Archives, with a source that shows a letter from the British Medical Association about National Health Insurance in 1912 (Walsh, n.d.). The main demands that the doctors were wanting from National Health Insurance were that; there should be a limit of income per week, the method to give the money to the doctors should be the same all over the country and using a method that the majority of doctors agree with, there should be consent from the patient before the doctor gives the treatment to the patient and also the amount of money that the doctors receive should correlate with the type of the treatments that were performed (Walsh, n.d.). This source shows that the reason why the British Medical Association criticised National Insurance were because they were against with the regulations that the act had and wanted them to change or they would refuse to form panels for patients (Walsh, n.d.). The British Medical Association were not against National Health Insurance entirely, they were more suspicious of how it was handled at first, but later on after the act had shown benefits for the doctors such as they were having a more stable income because of this and they accepted this to be a normal aspect of Britain’s social life and resulted to a higher number of doctors forming panels (Hill, 1985). The National Health Insurance was also opposed by the working class and this was because they felt that the government were being patronising towards them and were wary of the fact that the State were having more intervention in their lives (Lynch, 2005). Another reason why the working class were opposed to this act was that they were already paying for private insurance and believed that the act was only put in place to receive more money from the working class and to keep them to conform to the government (Lynch, 2005). There was much confusion on the intentions of this act and historian R.H Tawney interprets the reasons behind the confusion which is: that the middle and upper class believed that the reforms were to help improve the lives of the working class to then improve their performance at work and the working class believed that the reforms should improve their working conditions so that they have a higher chances of surviving at work (Lynch, 2005). However, historian Hill points out that overall most of lives were benefited from this act as it made the nation healthier and safer for the British citizens and it there was more medical attention being brought on to workers (Hill, 1985).