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A Level History Essay - Liberal Reforms - top band answer
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This is an essay on the Liberal Reforms from and was graded by my history teacher at the time who examines for AQA.
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Liberal Reforms under Asquith and Background
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‘LIBERAL SOCIAL REFORMS IN THE YEARS 1906 TO 1914 SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED THE PROBLEMSOF POVERTY’
ASSESS THE VALIDITY OF THIS VIEW
[25 MARKS]
After winning the 1906 election with a significant stress on ‘New Liberalism’, the Liberals introduced
their social reforms. This led to in the introduction of more state intervention for the vulnerable in
society, due to increasingly high unemployment rates and as a result of around 10% of the
population living in poverty, rising even closer to 30% in major cities like London. These reforms had
some notable impacts on society with the majority of the poorest families gaining something from
the legislation and provisions being made for children, workers, the poor and elderly. The state was
now moving away from their ‘laissez-faire’ attitudes, allowing crucial foundations to be laid for
future reforms. However, many aspects of society were still neglected and in desperate need of
support. The provisions the government did make, created a ‘basic minimum’, but did not go far
enough. It could be argued that this created more of a ‘relief’ instead of a ‘reduction’ in poverty.
For children, numerous provisions were created in order to reduce poverty, but these were run by
local education authorities instead of the central Government. This meant that some of the acts
were not enforced. By 1914, three quarters of local authorities were providing free medical
inspections. However, these checks were cursory and only two thirds of local authorities were
providing some form of free medical care to follow this up. Consequently, many of the poorer
families couldn’t afford to pay for the treatments necessary for their children, as free national
healthcare wasn’t introduced until 1948. Hence, the value of these medical inspections was
diminished, as the results couldn’t be acted upon, and poverty would not be significantly reduced.
Similarly, the Free School Meals Act was also run by local authorities which led to only half of them
signing up, as the act was not compulsory. Although, by 1914, 14 million school meals were provided
a year, which would have had a profoundly salient impact on reducing poverty and helping to
provide crucial foundations for future reforms. Despite this being a drastic change, as the
government was using state intervention to help people in need, it could have had more of a
beneficial impact on more children, if the act had been implemented by the central government
instead of local authorities. Therefore, the 1906 and 1907 Children’s Acts, did accentuate the
government’s changing attitude towards state intervention in order to reduce poverty and create a
‘basic minimum’ for children. Nevertheless, the reforms didn’t go far enough in terms of reducing
poverty, because they were limited as result of not being compulsory.
Fundamentally, workers came out the worst in the liberal reforms. As Sires states, ‘between 1906-10
prices rose more rapidly than wages’ resulting in a ‘large number of serious labour strikes’ because
of the lack of support through the reforms. It could be argued that whatever reforms were
introduced for workers, they inevitably wouldn’t be adequate enough to reduce poverty. Rowntree
discovered in 1901 that the main cause of poverty was due to low wages for workers. Consequently,
the government could have done more to combat this and reduce poverty by creating effective
reforms, improving pay for workers. In 1908, the Coal Mines Act was introduced to fix the length of
the working day to 8 hours, but many miners still had to work long hours, for low pay. As a result,
this was not improving the paramount issue of low wages causing major poverty. One of the most
significant acts for workers was the 1911 National Insurance Unemployment Act, which enabled
contributing workers to receive a weekly benefit if they were unemployed. For the families it helped,
this could have made a crucial difference in reducing poverty as this act covered nearly 2.5 million
workers, giving them a regular weekly sum, enabling them to avoid destitution. However, it only
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