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Social Policy by Other Means? Mutual Aid and the Origins of the Modern Welfare State in Britain During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2018

Bernard Harris
Bernard Harris*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
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Abstract:

During the last twenty years, several writers have drawn attention to the role played by friendly societies and other mutual-aid organizations in the development of Britain’s welfare state. Proponents of mutual aid have argued that these organizations were part of the rich associational culture of working-class life; that they represented a viable alternative to state welfare; and that they were eventually undermined by it. However, this article highlights the challenges that these organizations were already facing toward the end of the nineteenth century as a result of changes in working-class culture and the rise of more commercial insurance agencies. It suggests that the rise of state welfare was not so much a cause of these difficulties as a response to them. It also examines the role that friendly societies played in the expansion of welfare services after 1914 and their attitude to calls for further expansion before 1945.

Keywords

British Welfare Statemutual-aid societiesfriendly societiesworking-class civil society
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 202 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

This article was originally prepared for a workshop entitled “Social Policy by Other Means,” which was organized by the European Consortium for Political Research at the University of Warsaw, 30 March–2 April 2015. It was also discussed at a second meeting in Odense on 27–28 January 2016. I am grateful to Laura Seelkopf and Peter Starke for organizing these meetings and to Hendrik Moeys for helpful comments. I would also like to thank the UK Economic and Social Research Council for supporting some of the research on which the paper is based (RES-062-23-0324), and Aravinda Guntupalli and Roger Logan for their assistance in the collection of data from the Ancient Order of Foresters. The article has benefited considerably from comments made by the editor of JPH and three anonymous referees.

References

NOTES

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144. In 1911, the Ancient Order of Foresters reported that 467 members had been deprived of the full pension of five shillings a week and that 316 members had been deprived of part of their pension as a result of receiving friendly-society benefits. See Executive Council, “Address to the Officers and Members of the Order,” Second Quarterly Report of the 77th Executive Council of the AOF, 1911, 173–80; Inquiry re. Old Age Pensions, “Inquiry re. Old Age Pensions,” Second Quarterly Report of the 77th Executive Council of the AOF, 1911, 186–89.

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156. NCFS, “Interdepartmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services: Memorandum submitted on behalf of the NCFS,” Eleventh Quarterly Report of the 105th Executive Council of the AOF, 1942, 40ff., para. 4.

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158. Ibid.

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