Transcript Document 7125400

Laissez faire politics in Victorian Britain
•
Government and people
• Today, we take it for
granted that the
government will pass laws
to interfere in the lives of
citizens. It believes that it
should do this to ensure
that most people will have
a better life.
What actions do
Governments take
today to make
peoples’ lives
better?
Why do some people call the British
Welfare State “The Nanny State” or
“Santa Claus Land”?
Others think that where a government acts
to look after all its citizens ‘from the cradle
to the grave’, it shows a caring community.
• Some historians think that the creation of a
Welfare State in Britain, in the years after
World War II, was
the crowning glory
of government:
- the best thing any
government has done
for the country.
Other observers say that the Welfare State has been bad for
the country; that it has resulted in people taking welfare for
granted and not looking after themselves or ‘saving up for a
rainy day’. It has also meant that family values have fallen,
with many people saying “ the state will look after my
children and my old parents - it’s not my job.”
The staff of Pacific Palisades High in California, being threatened
with lawsuits left right and centre from parents of kids not achieving
desired grades, voted overwhelmingly to leave the following message
on the school's answering machine.
"In order to enable us to connect you to the right staff member, please select from
the following:
• To lie about why your child is absent, press 1
• To make excuses about why your child did not complete his homework, press 2
• To complain about what we do in this school, press 3
• To swear at a staff member, press 4
• To ask why you did not get the information we have already sent home to you,
press 5
• If you want us to raise your child, press 6
• If you would really rather slap or hit a member of staff, press 7
• To request yet another change of teacher, press 8
• To complain about school transport, press 9
• To complain about school lunches, press 0
• If you realise now that this is the real world and that your child must be
accountable for his/her own behaviour, class work, homework etc and that the
teacher is not to blame for your child's lack of effort, hang up and have a nice
day!"
The Nanny State or the Caring State?
• Some people feel that the state interferes too much
these days. Others that it doesn’t do enough.
• What is your view? Discuss this in class.
The Victorian view
• Victorian society believed that every person
should look out for themselves. It was not
government’s job to interfere in the everyday lives
of the people.
• The Victorian period is called
‘the Age of Individualism’.
• Samuel Smiles wrote:
“Heaven helps those
that help themselves.”
 Explain what he meant.
Who was Samuel Smiles?
• He was born on 23rd December, 1812. His parents ran a small
general store in Haddington in Scotland. After attending the local
school he left at fourteen and joined Dr. Robert Lewins as an
apprentice.
• After making good progress with
Dr. Lewins, Smiles went to
Edinburgh University in 1829
to study medicine. While in
Edinburgh, he became involved
in the campaign for parliamentary
reform. He graduated in 1832 and
found work as a doctor in Haddington.
• In 1837 Samuel Smiles began contributing articles on
parliamentary reform for the Leeds Times. The
following year he was invited to become the
newspaper's editor. Smiles decided to abandon his
career as a doctor and to become a full-time worker
for the cause of political change. In the Leeds Times,
Smiles expressed his powerful dislike of the
aristocracy and made attempts to unite working and
middle class reformers. Smiles also campaigned in
his newspaper in favour of factory legislation.
• In the 1850s Samuel Smiles
completely abandoned his interest in
parliamentary reform. Smiles now
argued that self-help provided the
best route to success.
• His book ‘Self Help’, which preached
industry, thrift and self-improvement,
was published in 1859. Smiles also
wrote a series of biographies of men
who had achieved success through
their own hard-work. This included
George Stephenson and Josiah
Wedgwood. Samuel Smiles died on
16th April, 1904.
Samuel Smiles explained what he meant.
Read his words and put them into
your own.
• “Whatever is done for men or
classes, to a certain extent takes
away the stimulus and
necessity of doing for
themselves; and where men are
subjected to over-guidance and
over-government, the
inevitable tendency is to render
them comparatively helpless.”
What did self help mean to mid 19th century Governments?
Copy out this list:
• Governments’ main functions were protecting Britain from foreign
powers, looking after the Empire; keeping law and order and
maintaining the existing order of things NOT interfering with the
lives of citizens.
• Government was mainly made up of the aristocratic, landed gentry
and rich town-dwellers and had to represent their interests.
• Governments had to keep public
expenditure down.
• Governments should not help the
lower classes as it would encourage
them to become scroungers.
• Governments feared that giving help
such as old-age pensions would make the
working class even less thrifty than they
were and spend their money on drink
and other vices.
• The best way to help the poor was through charity.
The name given to this government approach was
LAISSEZ FAIRE.
Write your own definition.
• The phrase ‘laissez faire’ comes from the French meaning
‘let go’- ‘leave alone’. It originally began as a term
meaning that the British Government should not interfere
with trade, based on the ideas of Scottish economist
Adam Smith but it came to mean the theory that the state
should not interfere in any area of British life.
Why did British government
adopt laissez-faire principles?
• British politicians thought they knew best. They were very
confident in their beliefs. Throughout the reign of Queen
Victoria (1837-1901), the United Kingdom was the world's
leading power. Its naval supremacy was unchallenged and
its dominant influence in diplomacy and international
affairs was acknowledged by all. It was building up a great
Empire. It was the strength of Britain's economy which
gave them the role of ‘workshop of the world’.
• It was argued that Britain had become so rich because of the hard
work of its upper classes and politicians. By the 1860s, it was
almost an article of faith that the nation had thrived because of
laissez-faire approaches in the economics and in society.
Governments had stayed out of Britain’s economic growth - and
this had made Britain great. They should do the same with society.
• Why had Britain become the ‘Workshop of the World”?
• Applied to social policy, ‘laissez faire’ indicates minimal government
involvement. Left to their own devices, according to this argument,
people will develop habits of sturdy self-reliance: they will look after
themselves. If they are supported by the state, people would rapidly
sink into a mode of dependency and become scroungers off the state:
relying on others to look after them. What’s your view?
Darwinism
• The ‘leave alone’ approach fitted in with Victorian ideas of Social
Darwinism. This was based on the evolutionary ideas of Charles
Darwin – that mankind had evolved because they fittest had survived.
If weak, less intelligent, less hard-working creatures had survived,
evolution would not have taken place.
• Who was Charles Darwin?
• Given a coconut tree and a stone, the stupid
monkey will try to eat the stone; the clever ape
will throw the stone to knock down a coconut.
That animal will eat and live and pass on his genes
to a generation of even more intelligent creatures.
• What would happen if he had shared his
coconut with the stupid monkey?
Social Darwinism
• Applying Darwin’s theory to society, the conclusion reached
by the Social Darwinians was that, in order to ensure that
Britain remained great, the idle, unintelligent, stupid goodfor-nothings should not be helped. Poverty was regarded as a
crime - brought about by stupid behaviour.
For those that did not believe in Darwinian science, they could
always blame God.Victorians believed that God had created
everyone to fulfil a role in society – and that everyone should know
that place - and stay in it. It was not up to the rich to better the poor:
as this verse of the Victorian hymn “All things Bright and Beautiful”
makes clear.
What is it saying?
• The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
GOD made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
• by Cecil Frances Alexander, 1818-1895,
written in 1848
Utilitarianism
• Another influential ideology,
Utilitarianism, developed in
the early 19th century alongside
laissez-faire. Associated primarily
with the philosopher Jeremy Bentham
(1749-1832), its central belief was that a wellordered society should seek to secure 'the greatest
happiness of the greatest number'. In theory,
laissez-faire could deliver that happiness for the
greatest number if indeed ‘looking after Number
One’ is what brings the greatest happiness to the
greatest number of people.
• Utilitarianism created the formula that would drive the 19th century
reform movement:
• Each institution must be tested by having applied to it the question
What is its use? If it had a legitimate purpose, it was considered useful
and refined; if it did not, it was to be rejected.
• Usefulness was established by: inquiry by a government commission,
corrective legislation, administration of the legislation, and official
inspection and reporting.
• Utilitarianism had a positive impact on the period because it reduced
privilege: the greatest good for the greatest number, rather than the
greatest good for just a few at the top. However, its lasting effects were
largely negative in that it expressed a simplified, mechanical view of
mankind and led to increased government involvement in everyday
life.
DISCUSS THIS THEORY.
Bentham thought that, to be remembered everything should
be useful: even his dead body!
•
In his will, Bentham said that he would leave money to be spent by
University College, London - as long as he was present at meetings. He
devised a formula to mummify his body so it could attend these meetings.
For ten years before his death, he carried around in his pocket the glass
eyes which were to be put in his preserved head and would show them off
at dinner parties! Unfortunately, when the time came to preserve his
head for posterity, the process went disastrously wrong, leaving it
decidedly unattractive. A wax head was therefore substituted, and for
some years the real head, with its glass eyes, lay on the floor of ‘Bentham’s
box’ between his legs.
• However, Bentham’s head proved an irresistible target for
students, and it frequently went missing, turning up on one
occasion in a luggage locker at Aberdeen station. The last
straw came when it was discovered being used for football
practice. Thereafter it was removed to the College vaults,
where it remains to this day. The body, with its wax head, is
kept in a cupboard in the meeting room of UCL and brought
out at all meetings.
The Poor Law also featured:
• the principle of 'less eligibility'
(meaning that workhouse
conditions should be made
less preferable than those of
the lowest paid labourer outside)
• the prohibition of outdoor relief (relief outside the
workhouse was forbidden)
• the segregation of different classes of paupers
(including the separation of married couples)
• the abolition of the 'rate-in-aid' (grants to
supplement low wages).
To make the workhouse as harsh as possible- and to make it a
useful place, the inmates had to work. These girls (from the movie
‘Oliver Twist’ are picking oakum: old ships rope, picked apart so
that it could be used for sealing the decks of ships. The photo
shows real women at work.
Other jobs included:
Stone-breaking — the results being saleable for roadmaking
Corn-grinding — heavy mill-stones were rotated by four or
more men turning a capstan (the resulting flour was usually
of very poor quality)
Gypsum-crushing — for use in plaster-making
Wood-chopping
• Bone-crushing was where old bones were pounded
into dust for use as fertilizer. It was a hard and
particularly unpleasant task. Its use was banned
after a scandal in 1845 when it was discovered
that inmates of Andover workhouse had been so
hungry that they had resorted to eating the rotting
scraps of flesh and marrow on the old bones they
were crushing.
Life in a workhouse:
• People ended-up in the workhouse for a variety of
reasons. Usually, it was because they were too
poor, old or ill to support themselves. This may
have resulted from such things as a lack of work
during periods of high unemployment, or someone
having no family willing or able to provide care
for them. Unmarried pregnant women were often
disowned by their families and the workhouse was
the only place they could go during and after the
birth of their child.
• Prior to the establishment of public mental asylums in the
mid-nineteenth century (and in some cases even after that),
the mentally ill and mentally handicapped poor were often
consigned to the workhouse. Workhouses, though, were
never prisons, and entry into them was generally a
voluntary although often painful decision. It also carried
with it a change in legal status. Until 1918, receipt of poor
relief meant a loss of the right to vote.
Many Victorians argued that poverty was a crime.
People ended up in the workhouse because they had
been stupid, or imprudent or drunken or immoral
during their working days.
Scotland also had Poor Houses, set up under the
1845 Poor Law Act (Scotland). This is the
Linlithgow Combination Poor House.
Where was it situated?
The Linlithgow Combination Poor House could hold over
200 inmates and their life was almost as grim as that of
paupers in England. It contained a Lunatic Wing which
housed those with mental problems, the blind, Downs
Syndrome children and the deaf and dumb.
Linlithgow’s Poor House did have children living in – but
under Scots law, they could be fostered out to houses in
West Lothian (Linlithgow shared the workhouse with its
Combination members: Abercorn; Bathgate; Bo’ness;
Carriden; Kirkliston; Muiravonside and Whitburn.)
"Hush-a-bye baby, on a tree top,
when you grow old, your wages will stop,
When you have spent the little you made:
First to the poorhouse, and then to the grave.
• What does this
Victorian rhyme tell
you about attitudes
to the Poor Law?
IN THE WORKHOUSE - CHRISTMAS DAY
by George R. Sims ( 1847 - 1922 )
This Victorian poem tells the story of man in a Workhouse who
refuses to eat his Christmas dinner- paid for by the Guardians,
because his wife had died rather than go in to one of the hated
institutions. They would not give her outdoor relief.
It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,
And the cold, bare walls are bright
With garlands of green and holly,
And the place is a pleasant sight;
For with clean-washed hands and faces,
In a long and hungry line
The paupers sit at the table,
For this is the hour they dine.
As we have already seen the ideas of laissez faire were being
challenged even in Victorian times. In 1885, Charles Booth refused to
believe the claim made by H. H. Hyndman, the leader of the Social
Democratic Federation, that 25% of the population of London lived in
abject poverty. Bored with running his successful business, Booth
decided to investigate the incidence of pauperism in the East End of the
city. He recruited a team of researchers that included his cousin,
Beatrice Potter.
The result of Booth's investigations, Labour and Life of the People, was published
in 1889. Booth's book revealed that the situation was even worse than that
suggested by H. H. Hyndman. Booth research suggested that 35% rather than 25%
were living in abject poverty.
Booth now decided to expand his research to cover the rest of London.
He continued to run his business during the day and confined his writing to
evenings and weekends. In an effort to obtain a comprehensive and reliable survey
Booth and his small team of researchers made at least two visits to every street in
the city.
Where did he find most evidence of poverty?
Over a twelve year period (1891 to 1903) Booth published
17 volumes of Life and Labour of the People of London.
In these books, Booth argued that the state should assume
responsibility for those living in poverty.
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree read Booth’s work and argued
that it only referred to London – it was such a huge city,
it was an exceptional case. Surely, he thought, the beautiful
city of York could not have such poverty.
What do you think?
Seebohm Rowntree was born in York on 7th July, 1871. He was the
third child of Joseph Rowntree and Emma Seebohm. He was educated
at the York Quaker Boarding School and Owen College, Manchester.
In 1897 Rowntree was appointed as a director of his father's
successful business in York. What do you think the company made?
In the 1860s Joseph Rowntree, had carried out two major surveys into
poverty in Britain. Inspired by his father's work and the study by Charles
Booth’s ‘ Life and Labour of the People in London’ (1889), Seebohm
Rowntree decided to carry out his own investigations into poverty in York.
Rowntree spent two years on the project and the results of his study,
Poverty, A Study of Town Life, was published in 1901.
Look at the photos and write down what you think he found.
In his study, Rowntree distinguished between families suffering from
primary and secondary poverty. Primary poverty, he argued, was where
the family lacked the earnings sufficient to obtain even the minimum
necessities, whereas families suffering from secondary poverty, had
earnings that were sufficient, but were spending some of that money on
other things. Whereas some of these were "useful", others, like spending
on alcohol, was "wasteful.
WRITE YOUR OWN DEFINTION OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
POVERTY.
Rowntree's study provided a wealth of statistical data on wages, hours of work,
nutritional needs, food consumed, health and housing. The book illustrated the
failings of the capitalist system and argued that new measures were needed to
overcome the problems of unemployment, old-age and ill-health.
Using your textbook write a detailed report on Rowntree’s report!
As we have seen, the old ideas of laissez faire were increasingly being
challenged by many people, including Booth and Rowntree whose reports
were hugely influential in changing the minds of politicians. Another
influential opinion was that of Professor T. H. Green of Oxford University
who argued strongly that it was a government’s responsibility to look after
its citizens and act on their behalf.
Internet work: Find out more about his address “Liberal Legislation
and Freedom of Contract” (1881) which gave early expression to ideas
central to the modern “welfare state.”
The work of Booth, Rowntree and TH Green influenced some
important politicians such as the Liberal MPs: David Lloyd George
and Winston Churchill. They began to push in parliament for more
social reform.
Now write your 20 mark essay:
Describe the 1834 Poor Law and its Workhouse System in
detail and explaining why it was like that.
Was laissez-faire ever relaxed in
Victorian politics?
Ans: YES! It wasn’t abandoned
but there was a definite shift
Improvements to the Poor Law
• The harshness of the Poor Law system, with its
grim Bastilles (as the workhouses were called) did
occasion a lot of criticism.
• Who wrote the story of a workhouse boy and the
conditions he faced?
Improvements to the Poor Law
• From the 1850s on some relaxation in the rules
were brought in.
• The old were given outdoor relief.
• Married couples could live together
- but in separate bedrooms.
• Infirmaries were built for sick paupers.
• Children were increasingly boarded out.
• However, the workhouse was still a grim, forbidding
place. The stigma of going there meant that many just
suffered grinding poverty.
So, in the light of so many examples of state intervention in various
aspects of social life, can we still say that there was 'an age of laissezfaire' in Victorian Britain?
• Some historians have argued it was...
1. By the middle of the 19th century, laissez-faire was firmly
established as the guiding principle in economic life.
2. State intervention was grudgingly conceded and limited in
its impact until at least the last quarter of the 19th century.
3. The state intervened to prevent those greater evils which
might threaten the efficiency of a free-trade economy and
not to provide positive benefits for its citizens.
4. Also, the burden of provision rested overwhelmingly with
local authorities and not with central government.
•
Can you think of any evidence for the opposing view?
• Thus, the range of what local authorities
might offer was massively expanded
during the Victorian era. What either
central or local government must
provide remained extremely limited. At
the turn of the 20th century, there was
no housing policy; there were no oldage pensions and no national insurance
schemes. For many English property
owners, reliance on local solutions to
local problems remained an absolute
priority. Charles Dickens's fictional
creation in Our Mutual Friend, Mr
Podsnap says "Centralization. No.
Never with my consent. Not English.”
Helping the poor and unemployed cost money
and government’s main aim was to keep
expenditure - and tax - down.
• In the 1860s and 1870s, the age of Gladstone and
Disraeli, income tax rates fluctuated between 3d
and 6d (1.5 to 2.5p) in the pound. So distasteful
did Gladstone find the principle of direct taxation
that he even promised to abolish income tax if he
won the election of 1874. He lost, and income tax
stayed. In 1869, though, only 2.1 per cent of all
state expenditure went on government
departments.
• Why did Victorian politicians hate income tax?
With government doing so little, there was no
need for a large number of officials.
• The Victorian civil service was very
small. Concerns about
'centralisation' and state power,
which some critics voiced at the
time, seemed ludicrously wide of
the mark. One of our most
distinguished historians, Eric
Hobsbawm, has asserted that, 'By
the middle of the nineteenth century
government policy in Britain came
as near laissez-faire as has ever
been practicable in a modern state.'
• It was industrialisation that perhaps did more than anything
to develop state involvement in what Victorians called 'the
social question'. The industrial revolution meant much
bigger towns and huge population increases. Britain's
population was almost twice as large in 1800 as in 1700,
three times as large by 1850 and more than five times as
great by 1900. By that year, it had reached 37 million.
Urbanisation and population growth combined to produce
social problems on an unprecedented scale.
As early as 1832, a doctor working in Manchester, J.P.
Kay, graphically illustrated the key problems.
“The state of the streets powerfully affects the health of their
inhabitants. Lack of cleanliness and of forethought are found along
with dissipation, reckless habits and disease. The population
gradually becomes physically less efficient as the producers of
wealth. Were such manners to prevail, the horrors of pauperism
would accumulate. A debilitated race would be rapidly multiplied.
Morality would afford no check to the increase of population: crime
and disease would be its only obstacles.”
Summarise this in your own words.
• Here is one historian’s view:
• “So, was Manchester better seen as the triumphant
productive capital of the world's first industrial nation or as
the 'shock city of the industrial age'? Should the Victorians
celebrate their world-beating industrial triumphs or quake
at a modern civilisation threatened by numberless hoards
of the dirty, the disease-ridden and the ill-educated. All
potential recruits to a vast criminal underclass? Evidence
steadily accumulated which confirmed Kay's early
analysis. Severe social problems afflicted all the large
cities of the United Kingdom. The government had to act.”
• Do you agree?
• By the mid-Victorian period, it was also clear that
problems of poverty and poor education were not
confined to urban areas. Poverty and hopelessness
abounded in rural areas now dominated by
markets and profit and where the supply of
agricultural labour was much greater than the
demand for it. The Victorians were great factfinders and they accumulated evidence about the
health and morality of the nation.
• In Britain the evidence of James Kay, Edwin Chadwick
and the other Victorian social commentators also
demonstrated the fragility of Britain’s role as the
‘Workshop of the World.’ Without state intervention, the
whole Victorian economic miracle might be undermined.
The solution adopted was central government intervention
to mitigate the most damaging effects of unrestrained
industrial capitalism. One area that governments
intervened in was education.
• Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools were first
appointed in 1839 and the first state-sponsored
teacher-training scheme followed in 1846. The
path to still greater state intervention was securely
paved in the early Victorian period and led to the
1870 Education Act, which developed local board
schools to fill up the gaps left by church provision.
• Compulsory elementary education followed in 1881 and the
opportunity for almost all children to receive free
elementary education without payment of any fees was
provided by 1891. Responsibility for state-supported
education was transferred, as Arthur Balfour put it, to 'those
great public assemblies, the borough councils and the
county councils of the country' in 1902. So government had
again breached the laissez faire mould – as had local
government.
Rival nation, Germany, was much
further ahead in social welfare:
– The beginning of the national German social welfare system
occurred in the 1880s while Chancellor Bismarck was in power.
A main reason for social legislation was the government's desire
to weaken support for socialism among workers and to
establish the superiority of the Prussian state over the churches.
The government hoped that provision of economic security in
case of major risks and loss of income would promote political
integration and political stability.
• Three laws laid the foundations of the German social welfare system: the Health
Insurance of Workers Law of 1883, which provided protection against the
temporary loss of income as a result of illness; the Accident Insurance Law of
1884, which aided workers injured on the job; and the Old Age and Invalidity
Insurance Law of 1889.
• Initially, these three laws covered only the top segments of the blue-collar
working class but they were a start.
• Germany had also introduced a form of Labour Exchange where unemployed
workers could go and find a job.
Extension of the franchise
• With more men getting the
vote, politicians also
understood that they would
have to listen more to what
those men wanted.
• Two Parliamentary Reform
Acts had extended the vote
to almost all adult males in
the country. This increased
electorate would vote for
the party that would help
them most.
The 1867 Reform Act gave the
vote to every male adult
householder living in a borough
constituency. Male lodgers paying
£10 for unfurnished rooms were
also granted the vote. This gave
the vote to about 1,500,000 men.
The 1884 Act gave the counties the
same franchise as the boroughs adult male householders and £10
lodgers - and added about six
million to the total number who
could vote in parliamentary
elections.
The Rise of Socialism
The old political parties
had to be seen to be doing
something to help working
men as a new party was
formed which was pledged
to represent working class
wishes.
What was this party called?
Write out some information
about it.
Who were the Fabians?
•
The Fabian Society was named after the Roman General, Quintus
Fabius Maximus, who advocated the weakening of the opposition by
harassing operations rather than becoming involved in pitched battles.
The group included socialists such as Eleanor Marx, Annie Besant,
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Clement Attlee,
Ramsay MacDonald, Emmeline Pankhurst, Arnold Bennett,
H. G. Wells and Rupert Brooke.
•
FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT SOME OF THESE PEOPLE.
• The Fabians believed that capitalism had created an
unjust and inefficient society. They agreed that the
ultimate aim of the group should be to reconstruct
"society in accordance with the highest moral
possibilities". The Fabians rejected the revolutionary
socialism of H. M. Hyndman and the Social
Democratic Federation and were concerned with
helping society to move to a socialist society "as
painless and effective as possible".
• The fact that there were many famous writers among
the group meant that they put huge pressure on the
government to change society.
Churchill had fought in the Boer War and was aware that many
men volunteering to fight in South Africa had been turned away
because they were medically unfit. He knew that Britain’s need
for national efficiency – a strong body of strong men needed to
fight for their country, was being threatened by poor living and
working conditions. In order to ensure a good supply of fit
soldiers, the government would need to intervene. Many
politicians were worried about Britain’s possible decline in terms
of National Efficiency.
National efficiency
• Fears that Britain was in decline as a world power
led to the idea that Britain had to improve its
national efficiency by taking steps to improve the
quality of the workforce and of its soldiers. If
Britain was to compete with countries like
Germany and the USA, and maintain its position
as a world power, then it had to be run efficiently
with a strong, healthy and well-educated
workforce.
20 mark essay
• To what extent were
the works of Booth
and Rowntree the
reason why
governments moved
away from laissez
faire policies between
1850 and 1906?