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The Working Class and State ‘Welfare’ in Britain, 1880–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Pat Thane
Pat Thane
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
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Extract

Some years ago Henry Pelling offered one of his stimulating and provocative challenges to a conventional wisdom of labour history. He pointed out that it is often assumed that the significant extensions of the welfare activities of the state by the post-1906 Liberal governments were in some way associated with the growth of the organized labour movement; that they were, if not simply responses to pressure from Labour (which has rarely been seriously argued), at least supported and welcomed by a significant proportion of the working class, and therefore could be expected by Liberal politicians to increase their credit with working-class voters, perhaps sufficiently to persuade them to resist the lure of Labour.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 877 - 900
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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105 A T.U.C. special conference on labour exchanges held in 1909 supported them ‘provided that the management boards contain an equal proportion of employers and representatives of trade unions’. T.U.C. Report, 1909, p. 54Google Scholar; League Leaflet, Mar. 1912; Whiteside, p. 10; Harris, pp. 354–5.