AREA OF
REFORM
SOCIAL
SECURITY
TO HELP
COMBAT
POVERT/
WANT
WHAT WAS
INTRODUCED
National Insurance Act 1946:
POSITIVE IMPACT
LIMITATIONS OF
REFORM
National Insurance (want)
Unemployment (given for
between 180 and 492 days)
Sickness Benefit(given
after workers paid 156
contributions)
Family/Guardian’s
Allowance
Maternity Benefit
Retirement Pension
Death Grant.
Rates of Benefits
Contributions were at a flat-rate
of 4s 11d per week (about 5% of
average earnings).
Single adults would receive 26
shillings (£1.30) a week.
Couples received 42
shillings(£2.10) per week
To qualify for sickness
workers had to make
benefit 156 contributions.
Therefore benefits
depended on contributions,
so not everyone was
covered
Benefit rates were
calculated in 1946 but not
fully implemented until
1948. The prices of goods
had increased
significantly, thus
reducing the purchasing
power of the benefits.
In 1948 welfare benefits
were only 19% of the
average industrial wage
and therefore well below
subsistence level. Many
were forced to apply for
national assistance.
Family Allowance benefits
were very small, but it was
hoped it would help to
keep wage demands down.
5s per week was to be given for
each child after the first. It was
the legal entitlement of the
mother, not the father.
Maternity
Widow’s Pension
.
HISTORIOGRAPHY
ADDITIONAL POINTS
From Madgewick et al,
British Political History
Poverty was not abolished,
but there is no doubt that
the number of people
seriously lacking food,
clothing, shelter and
warmth was substantially
reduced compared with the
1930s (or indeed any other
period)
It created a system of
universally available social
insurance, which provided
minimum incomes and
pensions to those subject
to ill-health, industrial
accidents, disablement,
infirmity and old age.
“the best and cheapest
insurance policy offered
to the British people”
POVERTY/
WANT Cont...
National Assistance Act 1948
Set up in 1948 to help people
not covered by the National
Insurance Act.
National Insurance
(Industrial Injuries) Act 1946
Payment for those temporarily
hurt in an accident
Long term payments for
anyone permanently unable to
work. All workers and
employers would contribute
payments (4d from the state,
employer and employee)
The Act provided a ‘safety net’.
It also provided benefits in the
form of one-off discretionary
grants. Or weekly payments
Benefits were set at 45 shillings,
which was a higher rate of
benefit than the unemployed.
This was paid by the
government, not employers.
Nat Assistance was
‘means tested’.
The stigma attached to this
meant many were reluctant
to apply.
In 1949 – 48% of all
national assistance
supplemented retirement
pensions. This rose to 68%
by 1950
The scheme needed a large
number of officials to
operate it.
The system was a marked
improvement but poverty
was not abolished..
.
Historian, Corelli Barnett,
believes that the Welfare
State only succeeded in
crushing individual
responsibility and creating
dependency on the state:
CONCLUSION:
Social security reforms
meant that everyone was
covered from the ‘cradle to
the grave’ (maternity grant
to funeral expenses)
However, schemes took a
lot of people to administer.
Not everyone was covered
by NI, thus the safety net
of National Assistance was
relied on by more than
anticipated
NATIONAL
HEALTH
SERVICE TO
COMBAT
DISEASE
Comprehensive and universal
system introduced. Medical
treatment was to be free to all.
NHS provided a universal health
service without any insurance
qualificationsof any sort.
It was available to the whole
population and a full range of
help would be given free of
charge e.g.
The NHS was providing the
same real services as other
countries but mostly at a lower
cost per patient.
In its first year of operation
treated some 8.5 million dental
patients… …and dispensed more
than 5 million pairs of
spectacles.
Doctors, dentists and opticians
were inundated with patients
queuing up for treatment. This
highlighted the backlog of
untreated problems which the
NHS faced. However, the NHS
improved the quality of life of a
major part of the population,
especially the elderly.
The NHS predicted budget
in 1948 was £134m. By
1950 the NHS was costing
£358 million a year
The Labour government
was forced to introduce
charges for spectacles,
dental and prescriptions.
Prescription charges
doubled after July 1948.
Beveridge resigned over
the issue of charging
Plans for new hospitals
and health centres had to
be shelved.
New demands put pressure
on the NHS e.g.
more mothers were
wanting their babies
delivered in hospital as
opposed to at home.
New medical techniques
also created new demands
and pressures e.g. cardiac
surgery was being applied
to heart disease, and the
first hip replacements were
beginning to be performed.
RIGHT WING HISTORIANS
ARGUE:
The NHS was too
generous in allowing
everyone to get free
dentures, spectacles and
prescriptions. This was
wasteful of scarce
resources. People were
getting things they did not
need.
The NHS was available
free to everybody from all
over the world and this
seemed to be overgenerous
for a country so recently
battered economically by
world war.
Critics claim they should
have invested in Britain’s
shattered industries rather
than social welfare.
However, it has also been
argued that the NHS
represented ‘the jewel in
the crown’ of Britain’s
welfare state
BUTLER
EDUCATION
ACT 1944
(PUT INTO
PRACTICE
BY 1947) TO
COMBAT
THE
PROBLEM
OF
IGNORANCE
1944 education act raised
leaving age to 15 and
introduced free secondary
education
Grammar school fees were
abolished
11 plus exams decided what
schools children went to
Building programme
introduced.
3 stages Nursery, Primary (511), Secondary (11+)
Free secondary education for all
became a right for the first time.
During Labour’s term in office,
35,000 teachers were trained
under the one-year emergency
training scheme.
Due to the scale of the economic
problems of the postwar period,
it was widely recognised that it
would take a generation to fully
implement the Education Act.
Labour was in no position to be
radical.
Aimed to offer opportunity to
all.
Allowed working class to get an
opportunity in education
1,176 schools were built or under
construction,
928 of these were primary
schools
Provision of school meals and
milk compulsory
There was no equality of
opportunity.
In theory, children were
allocated to the three types of
school after an 'intelligence' test
at 'eleven-plus'. This was
supposed to be an objective and
fair means of selecting pupils
irrespective of their social class
background.
In practice, it was a scramble by
the middle class for the limited
number of prestige places at the
grammar schools.
Only 20% of places were
available in grammar schools; a
tiny 5% of places were available
in technical schools and so the
rest (75%) were classified as
non - academic and allocated to
the low status secondary
modern schools.
Grammar schools were high
status schools largely for middle
class children. They had good
resources, well-trained teachers,
smaller classes and better exam
results. They alone were geared
up to getting their pupils
prepared for university
No attempt to solve differences
in educational provision across
the country.
Determined your future at the
age of 11.
From Kenneth Morgan
It is hard to avoid the view
that education was an area
where the Labour
Government failed to
provide new ideas or
inspiration, although the
new investment, the new
impetus at elementary
level, and the large
increase in the school
population did pave the
way for the educational
boom of the fifties and
sixties
HOUSING
REFORM TO
COMBAT
THE
PROBLEM
OF SQUALOR
1946 introduced New Towns
Act laid the plans for 14 new
towns.
1948 Housing Act for home
improvements
PROBLEMS FACED BY
THE POST WAR
GOVERNMENT
700,000 houses destroyed
during war.
In the Clydebank blitz only 7
of the 12000 houses remained
intact.
Aneurin Bevan stated ‘The
generally accepted estimate of
3,000,000 to 4,000,000 houses
is a broad indication of the
probable housing need during
the first 10-12 years of the
peace’
.
Bevan’s policy was to help those
most in need i.e. the working
class. Most of the scarce building
materials were allocated to the
local authorities to build council
houses for rent.
Perhaps more houses
could have been built had
more responsibility been
given to the private sector.
Many lower middle class
families who could afford
a house were not able to
Council houses were built to a
get one built.
high standard e.g. with toilets
Bevan insisted that council
upstairs as well as down.
homes were to be built to a
high standard, with an
After initial setbacks, the number average floor area of 1,000
of permanent new houses built
square feet compared to
rose from about 20,000 in 1945
800 square feet in the
to 139,000 in 1947, reaching a
1930s. Perhaps he should
high of 227,000 in 1948.
have put more emphasis
on quantity rather than
Between 1949 and 1951, an
quality.
average of 196,300 houses weres Raw materials were in
built per year. In all, about 1
short supply and
million houses were built by
expensive.
Labour between 1945-51.
Families were squatting in
Though the record was not
disused army camps while
overwhelming, it has been
waiting for housing.
argued that Labour came close to
its goal of 1945 in terms of the
objectives of housing: quality
and affordable working-class
homes.
Given the scale of social
and economic problems
facing the government in
1945, historians have
tended to judge Labour’s
housing policy less harshly
than some of its other
social reforms.
The Labour government's
record on house-building
does not compare well
with prewar levels or with
the achievements of the
Conservatives in the
1950s. However,
consideration must be
given to the economic and
post war climate. The
Government clearly had
massive problems to deal
with.
NATIONALIS
ATION TO
COMBAT
THE
PROBLEM
OF
UNEMPLOY
MENT/
IDLENESS
Beveridge insisted full
employment would solve
problem of poverty.
Labour government committed
to full employment which
required tighter control of the
economy.
Therefore key industries
nationalised: coal, electricity,
iron and steel, gas, railways,
waterways, airways, Bank of
England.
Dalton, the first postwar Labour
Chancellor of the Exchequer,
claimed that full employment
was "the greatest revolution
brought about by the Labour
Government."
Careful planning after 1945
helped to ensure: demobilisation
was carried out without upsetting
economic recovery
There was no return to high
unemployment in the pre-war
depressed regions of northern
and western Britain.
Unemployment throughout the
north-east coastal region of
England in 1938 had been 38 per
cent; in June 1951 it was running
at 1.5 per cent.
uccess in the so-called
Almost full employment after the
war
Unemployment only 2.5%
Between 1945 and 1951,
unemployment averaged 310,000
a year, compared to 1,716,000
for the period 1935-9
The average real wage in 1949
was 20% higher than in 1938.
People were better off.
There is little to criticise
about the unemployment
record during the period
1945-51
Only once, during the fuel
crisis of 1947 did
unemployment briefly
approach the one million
mark
However, it is argued that
low unemployment was
due more to the raising of
the school leaving age
from 14 to 15 in 1947, this
helped keep the
unemployment figures
down.
Most of the factors
affecting employment
were outwith government
control e.g. world demand
was growing
Britain could sell all its
exports. All countries
needed to re-stock due to
the damage and
interruptions of the war
therefore the government
did not have to create jobs
itself
Economic historians tend to
conclude that it was difficult
to see how Labour’s
performance could have been
improved upon.
Britain’s growth rates were
better than America’s. The
wartime slogan ‘Britain can
take it’ had changed to
‘Britain can make it’.
(Pearce)
‘The single most important
domestic achievement of the
Labour government was the
maintenance of full
employment after the war.’
(Brooke)
Some historians argue that
Labour can take little credit
for full employment.
Addison argues: ‘Full
employment was ..the result
of…the boom in private
investment after 1945.’
Simpson argues that both
factors had a role: ‘The
government owed its success
both to the good sense of its
policies and to favourable
trends in the world
economy’.