The welfare state

In 1918 there had been a wish to return to the "good old days". There was no such feeling during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill had told the nation, "We are not fighting to restore the past. We must plan and create a noble future." At the end of the war many reforms were introduced, both by Conservative and Labour Party ministers. Most of them agreed that there were social wrongs in British life which had to be put right. The reforms introduced were based on the "New Liberal" reforms which had been carried out just before the First World War. But they went much further, and it could be said that the whole nation, Conservative and Labour, had moved politically to the left. This move was one of the greatest achievements of the British labour movement, and its effect was felt for the next thirty years.

In 1944, for the first time, the government promised free secondary education for all, and promised to provide more further and higher education. In 1946 a Labour government brought in a new National Health Service, which gave everyone the right to free medical treatment. Two years later, in 1948, the National Assistance Act provided financial help for the old, the unemployed and those unable to work through sickness. Mothers and children also received help.

Progress in these areas was the result of new ideas about basic human rights. Important citizens' rights, particularly freedom of speech, had been firmly established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Political rights, particularly the right to vote, and to vote secretly, developed during the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century people began to demand basic social rights, such as the right to work, the right to proper health care, and the right to care in old age. The Times newspaper wrote in 1940: "If we speak of democracy we do not mean democracy which maintains the right to vote but forgets the right to work and the right to live."

The Labour government went further, taking over control of credit (the Bank of England), power (coal, iron and steel), and transport (railways and airlines). These acts were meant to give direction to the economy. But only 20 per cent of British industry was actually nationalised, and these nationalised industries served private industry rather than directed it. Nationalisation was a disappointment. Even the workers in the nationalised industries did not feel involved in making them succeed, as the planners had hoped. Strikes in the nationalised industries were as big a problem as they were in privately owned industries.

As a result of the changes which gave importance to people's happiness and wellbeing, the government became known as "the welfare state".

For the next quarter century both the Conservative and Labour parties were agreed on the need to keep up the "welfare state", in particular to avoid unemployment. Britain became in fact a social democracy, in which both main parties agreed on most of the basic values, and disagreed mainly about method. The main area of disagreement was the level of nationalisation desirable for the British economy to operate at its best.

However, although the welfare state improved many people's lives, it also introduced new problems. Government administration grew very fast in order to provide the new welfare services. Some people objected to the cost, and claimed that state welfare made people lazy and irresponsible about their own lives.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1709