Month: 01 juillet 2007

The first priority for the Thatcher Government in 1979 was the economy and the enterprise culture. Changes were proposed to decrease direct taxation (i.e. income tax) and increase indirect taxation (i.e. VAT).

The Government also began a policy of privatisation and proposed to sell off council houses to their tenants. A prime objective was to reduce the inflation rate which had peaked briefly over three months in 1976 at the equivalent rate of 27% per annum.

It seemed the Government was keen to reduce the power of Local Authorities, which were often Labour, especially in the big conurbations, and increase the power of central government.

Mrs Margaret Thatcher had a clear notion of the relationship between the individual and society :

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour.

– M. Thatcher, Woman’s Own, October 31, 1987

and later on :

I was an individualist in the sense that individuals are ultimately accountable for their actions and must behave like it. But I always refused to accept that there was some kind of conflict between this kind of individualism and social responsibility. I was reinforced in this view by the writings of conservative thinkers in the United States on the growth of an ‘underclass’ and the development of a dependency culture. If irresponsible behaviour does not involve penalty of some kind, irresponsibility will for a large number of people become the norm. More important still, the attitudes may be passed on to their children, setting them off in the wrong direction.

I had great regard for the Victorians for many reasons – not least their civic spirit to which the increase in voluntary and charitable societies and the great buildings and endowments of our cities pay eloquent tribute. I never felt uneasy about praising ‘Victorian values’ or – the phrase I originally used – ‘Victorian virtues’, not least because they were by no means just Victorian. But the Victorians also had away of talking which summed up what we were now rediscovering – they distinguished between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving poor’. Both groups should be given help : but it must be help of very different kinds if public spending is not just going to reinforce the dependency culture. The problem with our welfare state was that – perhaps to some degree inevitably we had failed to remember that distinction and so we provided the same ‘help’ to those who had genuinely fallen into difficulties and needed some support till they could get out of them, as to those who had simply lost the will or habit of work and self-improvement. The purpose of help must not be to allow people merely to live a half-life, but to restore their self-discipline and through that their self-esteem.

I was also impressed by the writing of the American theologian and social scientist Michael Novak who put into new and striking language what I had always believed about individuals and communities. Mr Novak stressed the fact that what he called ‘democratic capitalism’ was a moral and social, not just an economic system, that it encouraged a range of virtues and that it depended upon co-operation not just ‘going it alone’. These were important insights which, along with our thinking about the effects of the dependency culture, provided the intellectual basis for my approach to those great questions brought together in political parlance as ‘the quality of life’.

– M. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, 1995

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Inequalities between women of different social categories are nothing new. Despite the effects of the Welfare State, there remained several inequalities right into the 1960s.

In the field of abortion for example, some managed to find a compliant doctor and the money to pay for the abortion and there were those who either were unable to find the means of terminating an unwanted pregnancy or who resorted to back street butchery.

The Family Planning Act was passed in 1967 and was to have a great effect on women’s lives. Abortion became more easily available: in 1968, 22,000 abortions were carried out in public hospitals; in 1969, the number reached 31,000. The figure for single women continued to rise in the 1970s and 1980s: in 1971, 44,300; in 1990, 116,200. However, for married women, the figure actually fell slightly during the same period (1971, 41,500; 1990, 38,200).

Young mothers have always had difficulties in returning to work, especially if they were unable to find a willing child-minder. One reason is that until the 1990s, children usually did not go to school until the age of 5.

And child-minding was usually quite expensive as the local authorities only provided a limited number of places. This was not surprising as successive Government policies had encouraged women to remain at home to look after the children rather than to enter the workplace.

The number of births to unmarried mothers remained fairly stable from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s at approximately 4% of the total of births. From the 1960’s onwards, the percentage doubled. Then followed a period of relative stability (due probably to the effects of The Family Planning Act). Later, the percentages rose (luring the 1980’s and 1990’s.

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According to Seymour-Ure (in The Political Impact of Mass Media, 1974), the disturbances in Notting Hill in 1958 symbolised a turning point in British race relations.

Previously, immigration had been a relatively peripheral political issue; after 1958 it became one of the most important and the most sensitive.

In 1962, the Conservative Government passed the Commonwealth Immigration Act, introducing controls through a voucher system to limit the flow of West Indian and Indian sub-continent immigrants.

When the Labour Government came to power, instead of repealing the legislation, as they might have (cf. Race Relation Act, 1976 – Chapter 74) been expected to do (the Labour Party had opposed the introduction of the 1962 Act but the defeat of the Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker at the 1964 General Election in the Midlands constituency of Smethwick, with a large percentage of “immigrants”, was a sign that Labour had to tread softly on this issue), they in fact tightened by the Act in 1965 by limiting the number of vouchers still further.

In the mid-1960s, a growing number of Kenyan Asians were settling in Britain. The Labour Government then passed the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, stopping “coloured” immigration, though with a voucher scheme for Kenyan Asians.

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Before the Industrial Revolution, men and women worked together as an economic unit, especially in rural communities. In well-off households, women would run the house.

The Industrial Revolution polarised women’s condition: the well-to-do withdrew from household management, leaving the way clear for the housekeeper. A woman was seen by the upper classes as an idealised creature, gentle, pure, and pious.

However, the ever more numerous working-class women would frequently work in factories. In 1851, 2.3m women and female children of working age out of 8m worked. Many women worked in service (1.2 million in 1881). Feminists disliked both these extremes.

Arguments against the franchise for women: women were disqualified by their sex; the franchise was based on property qualification; women were thought to be too emotional; most women did not need the vote (they were surrounded by men who often would have it).

For the rest, if vagrant and very poor men did not have the vote, then their women did not deserve it either; the “idealized” woman was above the dirty affairs of Parliament; female suffrage might well pose a threat to men’s sexual domination of women.

Women’s rights were limited if non-existent throughout the 19th century. Reforms were finally obtained after the perseverance of female/feminist activists.

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Two approaches seem to characterize the second half of the 19th century: on the one hand, Victorian philanthropy, designed essentially to reward those worthy of salvation and, on the other hand, a movement away from assistance towards self-help, the Cooperative Movement, Friendly Societies including Oddfellows, Trade Unions…

Charity was widespread during the 19th century though the actual amount distributed is difficult to estimate. It is claimed by William Howe, who produced surveys of London charities, that “the income of the London charities… (reached)… £2,250,000 in 1874-75 rising to £3,150,000 in 1893-94“. This was approximately one-third the figure spent by the Poor Law authorities at the time.

There have even been claims that charity exceeded State expenditure on the poor. Of course, not all charitable donations were intended for the poor.

Middle-class philanthropy was sometimes to be found in certain employers who attempted to look after the welfare of their workers: Cadbury in Birmingham, Lever on Merseyside, and Colman in Norwich are examples of this.

In 1869, the Charity Organization Society (C.O.S.) was set up to organize charities to maximize the charitable effects and to minimize any demoralization of the poor, by encouraging undeserving people to remain recipients of relief.

One of its leading lights was Octavia Hill, a leading housing reformer. Beneficiaries of church-sponsored charities would be expected to attend church or send their offspring to Sunday School in exchange for help. Many poor people resented this dependency culture and preferred to remain defiantly independent yet in need.

When one mentions “self-help”, one thinks immediately of Samuel Smiles: the moralizing concept of “self-help” seemed to be a value prized by the mid-Victorian middle class.

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