Bread For All Summary

In Bread for All, Chris Renwick argues that ‘Liberal thinkers’ efforts to reform their ideas […] were crucial in the development of welfare provision.’ This judgement is entirely correct: Green and his successors redefined the role of the state in dealing with the welfare of its citizens. However, the reforms themselves were not solely prompted by ‘New Liberal’ ideas. While important in determining the form which Edwardian social reforms took – redistributive, and radically expanding the role of the state – they were far less crucial in bringing the process of reform about in the first place. The empirical studies of Booth and Rowntree also prompted the process of social reform, by demonstrating the failures of Gladstonian liberalism, and
H. Pelling argue that the reforms were actually unwanted by the working class: “the extension of the power of the state at the beginning of this century, which is generally regarded as having laid the foundations of the Welfare State, was by no means welcomed by members of the working class, was indeed undertaken over the critical hostility of many of them, perhaps most of them”. Pat Thane gives further evidence for this theory. The fact that the more far-reaching of the Liberal reforms only begun in 1908, after Campbell-Bannerman’s resignation, also seems to count against any theory which ascribes sole responsibility for the reforms to Labour and the working class: nothing major changed in terms of Labour MPs or working class opinion in these two years; the major change was a “New Liberal” politician taking over from a Gladstonian liberal. The ideology of individual politicians was arguably more important, and this was influenced by Booth, Rowntree, and T.H. Green. It is also important to consider the timing of the reforms – had they been due entirely to working class enfranchisement and pressure, surely they would have occurred immediately after the 1867 Reform Act, rather than in the early twentieth