Laissez faire politics in Victorian Britain

1
Laissez faire politics in Victorian Britain

2
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?

3
Why do some people call the British Welfare State
The Nanny State or Santa Claus Land?
4
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.

5
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 - its not
my job.
6
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!"

7
The Nanny State or the Caring State?

• Some people feel that the state interferes too
  much these days. Others that it doesnt do
  enough.
• What is your view? Discuss this in class.

8
The Victorian view

• Victorian society believed that every person
  should look out for themselves. It was not
  governments 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.

9
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.

10

• 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.

11

• 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.

12
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.

13
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.

14
The name given to this government approach
wasLAISSEZ 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.

15
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.

16

• 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 Britains economic growth - and this had
  made Britain great. They should do the same with
  society.
• Why had Britain become the Workshop of the
  World?

17

• 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. Whats your view?

18
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?

19

• 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?

20
Social Darwinism

• Applying Darwins theory to society, the
  conclusion reached by the Social Darwinians was
  that, in order to ensure that Britain remained
  great, the idle, unintelligent, stupid
  good-for-nothings should not be helped. Poverty
  was regarded as a crime - brought about by stupid
  behaviour.

21
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

22
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
  well-ordered 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.

23

• 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.

24
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
  Benthams box between his legs. 

25

• However, Benthams 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.

26
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).

27
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.
28
Other jobs includedStone-breaking the
results being saleable for road-makingCorn-grindi
ng 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-makingWood-chopping
29

• 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.

30
Life in a workhouse
31

• 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.

32

• 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.

33
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.
34
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?
35
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.
36
Linlithgows 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 Boness Carriden
Kirkliston Muiravonside and Whitburn.)
37
"Hush-a-bye baby, on a tree top,when you grow
old, your wages will stop,When you have spent
the little you madeFirst to the poorhouse, and
then to the grave.

• What does this Victorian rhyme tell you about
  attitudes to the Poor Law?

38
 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.

39
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.
40
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?
41
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.
42
Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree read Booths 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?
43
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?
44
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 Booths 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.
45
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.
46
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 Rowntrees report!
47
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
governments 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.
48
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.
49
Now write your 20 mark essayDescribe the 1834
Poor Law and its Workhouse System in detail and
explaining why it was like that.
50
Was laissez-faire ever relaxed in Victorian
politics?
Ans YES! It wasnt abandoned but there was a
definite shift
51
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?

52
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.

53
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
laissez-faire' in Victorian Britain?

• Some historians have argued it was...
• By the middle of the 19th century, laissez-faire
  was firmly established as the guiding principle
  in economic life.
• State intervention was grudgingly conceded and
  limited in its impact until at least the last
  quarter of the 19th century.
• 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.
• 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?

54

• 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 old-age 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.

55
Helping the poor and unemployed cost money and
governments 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?

56
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.'

57

• 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.
  
  

58

• 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.

59

• Here is one historians 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?

60

• 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
  fact-finders and they accumulated evidence about
  the health and morality of the nation.

61

• In Britain the evidence of James Kay, Edwin
  Chadwick and the other Victorian social
  commentators also demonstrated the fragility of
  Britains 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.

62

• 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.

63
 

• 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.

64
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.

65
Extension of the franchise
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.

• 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 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.
66
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.

67
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.

68

• 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.

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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 Britains 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 Britains possible
decline in terms of National Efficiency.
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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.

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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?