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History > Great Britain, 1815–1914 > Late Victorian Britain > State and society

From the 1880s a mounting sense of the limits of the liberal, regulative state became apparent. One reflection of this awareness was the increasing perception of national decline, relative to the increasing strength of other European countries and the United States. This awareness was reinforced by British military failures in the South African War (Boer War) of 1899–1902, a “free enterprise war” in which free enterprise was found wanting. One consequence of this and other developments was the growth of movements aimed at “national efficiency” as a means of establishing a more effective state machine. The recognition of social problems at home—such as the “discovery” of urban poverty in 1880s in the assumed presence of plenty and increasing anxiety about the “labour question”—also raised questions about the adequacy of the state in dealing with the mounting problems of an increasingly populous and complex society. Toward the end of the century, the possibility of a violent outcome in the increasingly intractable problem of Ireland brought existing constitutional methods into question. Behind much of this anxiety was a sense that the Third Reform Act of 1884 (see Reform Bill) and changes in local government were precipitating a much more democratic polity, for which the classical liberal state had no easy answers. The example of what was called at the time municipal socialism, especially as it existed in Birmingham under the direction of its mayor, Joseph Chamberlain (1873–76), indicated what the local state could accomplish. Instead of the old “natural order” religion that had underpinned the state previously, different currents of thought emerged that saw the state and community as necessary for individual self-realization. German idealism, socialism, and new liberalism (see libertarianism) all encompassed different ways of rethinking the state.

This rethinking revolved around the belief that the operation of the state must incorporate consideration of the collective characteristics of society—that is, solidarity, interdependence, and common identity—in a much more direct way than hitherto. Indeed, the idea of the “social” came to characterize the entire period and even much later eras. Notions of a distinct social sphere, separate from the economic and political realms, had emerged much earlier, based upon the idea that the characteristics of this social realm were evident in the biological, vital characteristics of populations, so that society was very often understood in organic terms. The influence of Malthus in the early 19th century and Darwin in the mid-19th century contributed powerfully to this worldview, giving rise to late 19th-century representations of society in the strongly biological terms of “social eugenics” and other variations of “racial” thought, such as the idea of the “degeneration” of the working class. From about the turn of the 20th century, the concept of the social realm as autonomous developed alongside and partly incorporated older understandings. The social question became a sociological question, as indeed it has remained until very recently in British history. Society was now understood, unlike in earlier times, to work according to its own laws and to be divorced from moral questions, although, in practice, political interventions were invariably designed to change moral behaviour.

One major result of this questioning of the state and of new conceptions of society was the extensive social legislation of the Liberal administrations after 1905, which is widely seen as the foundation of the 20th-century welfare state. The new Liberal government embarked upon a program of social legislation that involved free school meals (1905), a school medical service (1907), and the Children's Act (1908). The Old Age Pensions Act (1908) granted pensions under prescribed conditions to people over age 70, and in 1908 the miners were given a statutory working day of eight hours. In 1909 trade boards were set up to fix wages in designated industries in which there was little or no trade union strength, and labour exchanges were created to try to reduce unemployment. In 1911 the National Insurance Act was passed, whereby the state and employers supplemented employees' contributions towards protection against unemployment and ill health. This act clearly represented a departure from the manner in which government had been carried out, as it began to be executed in supposed accordance with the social characteristics of the governed (age, family circumstances, gender, labour). Under this new dispensation, individual rights, as well as the rights of families, were secured not by individual economic action but by state action and by the provision of pensions and benefits. These new rights were secured as social rights, so that individual rights were connected to a web of obligations, rights, and solidarities extending across the individual's life, across the lives of all individuals in a population, and between individuals across generations—in short, a network of relations that was in fact one early version of society as a sui generis entity.

However, much of this new relationship of state and society was still recognizably liberal in the older sense, constituting a compact of social and individual responsibility. At the heart of this compact was the belief that it was necessary to safeguard the individual from the unfettered operation of the free market, while at the same time making sure that there must be an obligation to obtain gainful employment. Contributory pension schemes required individuals to make regular payments into them rather than providing social insurance from general taxation. The National Insurance Act provided a framework within which workers were to practice self-help, and, although involvement was mandatory, the administration of the legislation was largely through voluntary institutions. David Lloyd George, who did most to push the legislation through, himself combined these characteristics of old and new liberalism. At the same time, in practice this new formula of government emerged in a very piecemeal and haphazard way, often driven by the circumstances of the moment, not least the circumstances of party politics. Moreover, the circumstances of war were of overwhelming importance. It was World War I in particular that fostered the idea of the increased importance of the interventionist, collectivist state. The demands of winning the war required an unparalleled intervention in a running of the economy and in the operations of social life, particularly when the radical Liberal Lloyd George took power in 1916. Perhaps the most important factor legitimizing the increased role of the state was conscription in the armed services, and the most important general outcome was the idea that “planning” (understood in many different ways) was from this point forward a fully legitimate part of governmental enterprise. Nonetheless, despite the piecemeal nature of the change, what is striking is how this understanding of the relationship between state and society obtained across the whole political spectrum and how it lasted so long. This increased role of the state was accompanied, after World War I, by the increasing specialization and professionalization of an expanding civil service.

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