GCSE OCR Modern World History revision presentation - What you need to know about the Liberal Government's Reforms for your Paper 2 exam

1. The Reforms of the Liberal
Government
Aim of the lesson:
Revision

2. Along with the Conservatives, the other
major political party was the Liberal
party. The Liberals won a huge victory
in 1906 election.
Liberals =401 seats
Conservatives = 157 seats
Labour = 29 seats
This was an amazing victory after two
decades of Conservative governments.

3. The ‘New Liberal’ Party of
1906 promised to introduce
social reforms to help the
old and weak. It was a
message the voters wanted
to hear and Henry Campbell-
Bannerman became the new
Prime Minister. But why was
the Liberal Party suddenly
promising to improve the
standard of living? The
party had been in
government before but had
not made these changes.
Henry Campbell-
Bannerman

4. New Liberalism
The creators of this
‘New Liberalism’
were David Lloyd-
George and Winston
Churchill. They had
a number of reasons
for wanting to turn
the Liberal Party
into the party of
reform.

5. • One reason was that some people in the
Liberal Party realised that the rise of the
Labour Party was a sign that working
people were not happy with the two big
parties. Both hoped that concern for the
poor would win votes from people who were
turning to the Labour Party.

6. • Lloyd George was raised in a Welsh
village and hated the English upper
classes. He really wanted to improve the
conditions of ordinary people in an age
when MPs were not paid, most MPs were
already rich men before becoming MPs.
Lloyd George was unusual in not being
rich.

7. • The work of the social investigators
such as Charles Booth and Seebohm
Rowntree had revealed the true extent
of poverty in England. They had shown
disease, unemployment and old age to be
the causes of poverty, and not laziness
as many people previously believed.

8. William and Catherine Booth
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army
used attention grabbing
techniques to attract
crowds and bring in
money. It helped people
to find jobs, train the
poor and to give them a
sense of purpose.
However, they gathered
lots of information
about the causes of
poverty and the poor.
The starving and homeless,
but honest poor
Those who
live by
crime
Those who live
by vice

9. Charles Booth (1840-1916)
Charles Booth refused to
accept the official
statistics that said that
about 25% of the working
population was living in
poverty. He decided to
find out for himself. He
discovered that nearly 31%
of Londoners were living
below the ‘poverty line’.
By this, he meant that they
did not have the money to
buy enough food, shelter
and clothing.

10. • Lloyd George had visited Germany, the country
which was quickly developing into the new
industrial leader of Europe. Germany already
had health insurance and old age pensions. It
was hoped that the reforms in Britain would
produce a stronger and fitter workforce, which
would be able to meet the challenge of
Germany. Unless the living conditions of
working people were improved then Germany
would become a more important industrial
power and Britain would no longer lead the
world.

11. • Between 1899 and 1902 Britain was at war
with South Africa (The Boer War). Half the
men who volunteered to go and fight were
simply not fit enough to fight. If Britain was
to remain the most powerful country in the
world it needed an army capable of defending
its empire. That meant much healthier people.

12. What were the problems facing
the Liberals?
• Education
Education was a vital if Britain was to have a
modern workforce. By 1900 every child did
go to school. In 1899 the school leaving age
was raised to 12 and this meant that every
child received a basic education at an
elementary school. However, only about 1
child in 80 went on to secondary school.

13. Secondary education was not free and so most
working-class people couldn’t afford it. Of
course the very rich sent their sons to public
schools, which aimed to turn out perfect
Christian English gentlemen, and most middle-
class families did sent their children to
secondary school. But, in Germany, far more
children attended secondary school. As far as
education was concerned, Britain was losing out
to its new rival.
In 1902 the Conservative Education Act brought
education under the control of local councils and
have them the power to open secondary schools
as well, but they were still not free.

14. Poverty
At the beginning of the
20th
century many British
people lived in terrible
conditions. By 1906 towns
were very overcrowded.
75% of the British people
lived in such towns. By
1913 half a million people a
year were still dying from
diseases such as
pneumonia, bronchitis and
tuberculosis.

15. At the opening of the 20th
century Britain was
arguably the richest country in the world. Yet
for many of the working class the problems was
not just that they lived in terrible conditions.
They were often laid off when there was no
work and this meant no money coming into the
household. Once they were too old to work,
there were no pensions for them. The
governments of the 19th
century did not get
involved in people’s lives.
Nevertheless, in 1875 the Public Health Act
was introduced. This made it the duty of the
local councils to keep sewers clean and to
remove rubbish from the streets. However,
most councils did nothing to improve the slum
housing.

16. Free School Meals (1906)
•Local councils were given powers to give free
meals to children from poor families
•These meals were to be paid for from the
local rates (local taxes on property)
•By 1914, over 150,000 children were having a
daily free meal, every day.
•However, less than half the education
authorities in England and Wales provided the
free meals
•In 1914, the Government made it compulsory
for authorities to provide these meals

17. School Medical Inspections
(1907)
• Doctors and nurses went into schools to
provide free compulsory medical checks
for children
• They could recommend any treatment
that was necessary
• Any treatment required by the children
had to be paid for by the parents (until
1912)

18. Children’s Act (1908)
• Children were now protected, by law, against cruelty
from their parents
• Poor law authorities were responsible for visiting and
supervising children who had suffered cruelty or
neglect
• Children’s homes to be registered and inspected
• Children under 14 who committed crimes were now
not to be sent to adult prisons
• Special juvenile courts to be set up to try children
accused of crimes
• Criminal children were to be sent to borstals,
specially built to cope with young offenders
• Children under 14 not to be allowed into pubs
• Cigarettes or alcohol not to be sold to children under
16

19. Dr Barnardo
The London in which Thomas Barnardo
arrived in 1866 was a city struggling to
cope with the effects of the Industrial
Revolution. The population had
dramatically increased and much of this
increase was concentrated in the East
End, where overcrowding, bad housing,
unemployment, poverty and disease were
rife.

20. In 1867, Thomas Barnardo set up a ragged
school in the East End, where poor
children could get a basic education. One
evening a boy at the Mission took Thomas
Barnardo around the East End showing him
children sleeping on roofs and in gutters.
The encounter so affected him he decided
to devote himself to helping destitute
children. By the time Thomas Barnardo
died in 1905, the charity he founded ran
96 homes caring for more than 8,500
children.

21. Old Age Pensions (1908)
• This gave weekly pensions to the elderly
from the government
• Everyone over the age of 70 got a
pension
• A single person received 5s a week and a
married person got 7s 6d (later 10s)
• There were some rules you had to follow
to get the pensions

22. Labour Exchanges Act (1909)
•Set up a national string of state labour
exchanges
•Meant that the unemployed could go to
an exchange to look for a job
•Much more efficient for those seeking a
job and those offering them …
•By 1913 there were 430 exchanges in
Britain

23. National Insurance Act (1911)
Set up an insurance scheme to prevent
poverty arising from illness …
1. All manual workers and people in low-paid jobs had
to join
2. Workers paid 4d for insurance stamps which they
stuck on a special card
3. Employers gave 3d per worker in the scheme
4. The Government gave 2d for each worker in the
scheme
5. If a worker in the scheme fell ill, they got sick pay
of 10s per week for 13 weeks, then 5s per week for
a further 13 week in the year
6. Workers in the scheme could have free medical care

24. National Insurance Act II (1912)
Although there were about 10 million men and 4 million women
covered by the national insurance scheme, a second act was
necessary to deal with workers who found themselves
periodically out of work
1. Scheme open to those in industries where there
was seasonal employment (e.g. shipbuilding,
engineering)
2. Workers, employers and Government all paid 2d
per week for insurance stamps
3. When unemployed, workers could be paid 7s 6d a
week for up to 15 weeks in any one year.

25. How effective were they?
• It can be argued that the reforms were
successful as they could have been given
the SCALE OF THE PROBLEM when the
liberals came to power
• The Liberals were also distracted by the
increasing threat of Germany and the
expense of preparing for war.
• Also the Conservative dominated House
of Lords regularly opposed liberal
proposals

26. • The Liberal reforms marked a transition
point between the old laissez-faire
attitudes and the Welfare State.
• The Liberal years of 1906-1914 laid the
foundations of a Welfare State.
• Winston Churchill “If we see a drowning
man we do not drag him to the shore.
Instead, we provide help to allow him to
swim ashore”
• Basically means help them so they can
help themselves.