| Measures for the "relief" of the poor go back to Tudor times. But they have always been more about the relief of the landowning and employing classes... |
The unholy trinity: poverty, capitalism...and Poor Laws
WORKERS, DEC 2004 ISSUE
Despite the boasts of chancellor Gordon Brown about the state of the British economy, many workers are unable to live on what they earn, many more are unemployed or constantly in and out of work. Around 14% of working age households are now in receipt of tax credits.
In total, more than three times more people receive tax credits now than received Family Credit a decade ago.
And temporary work goes with low pay. Two-fifths of those unemployed who get work are out-of-work again within six months. A third of temporary employees would like a permanent job.
Tax credits apparently do not enable people to climb out of poverty by accepting work for pitiful wages. One has to consider whether such measures are really for the benefit of the worker as advertised, or for the benefit of the employer, and it is instructive to look back at what happened when the system was called poor relief.
The idea of poor relief dates back to Tudor times, when it was organised by the parishes. It was funded from rates raised from local landowners and tenant farmers. The poor had to apply to an overseer, who would only grant relief to those born in the parish.
"Indoor relief" was help given to paupers who lived in the parish workhouse, whilst "outdoor relief" was money or goods given to those living at home. Outdoor relief tended to be more common from the 18th century. In the South, the "Speenhamland" system was often used, when money was granted on the basis of the size of the family and the price of bread.
Poverty in Victorian Britain: commentators at the time were inclined to blame it on the idleness of the labouring classes.
Opposition
There was opposition to the idea of poor relief from very different quarters. Some, like Thomas Malthus, thought that relief encouraged idleness and large families. "I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour...It is also difficult to suppose that they have not powerfully contributed to generate that carelessness and want of frugality observable amongst the poor...The labouring poor seem always to live from hand to mouth — they seldom think of the future."
Politicians influenced by Bentham and utilitarianism condemned parish administration of poor relief as inefficient and wasteful, and ratepayers were worried by the soaring bills. Poor relief costs rose from 32 million in the 1780s to 38.6 million in 1832. The enclosures of the agricultural revolution had cast many workers off the land, and domestic industry was in decline, adding to the periodic cycles of capitalism, which brought low wages and unemployment. But was poor relief itself contributing to the problem?
The Whig government appointed a Poor Law Commission, which blamed outdoor relief for farm labourers' riots: "It appears from all our returns that the discontent of the labouring classes is proportioned to the money dispensed in poor rates, or in voluntary..." The explanation given was that the labourers thought that those administering the funds were committing fraud.
Misery
In fact the farm employers would get rid of the men after harvest and leave them to subsist the best way they could during the bitter winter months. According to W.H. Hudson, who interviewed old Wiltshire farm labourers, "the misery of these out-of-work labourers was extreme ...at night they would skulk about the fields to rob a swede or two to satisfy the cravings of hunger."
The Poor Law Commission decided that hunger was to be corrected by punishment. It recommended that the able-bodied should no longer get outdoor relief, which should only be paid to the old or sick with no family. Instead, they would have to go to workhouses, where conditions would be harsher than those outside, to make them less desirable than any work outside, however seasonal or pitiful the wages. The parishes were grouped under Guardians and a Central Board supervised them. This was the basis of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. It was in fact very difficult to implement. By 1837 the administration had largely been put in place, and workhouses built in the South and the Midlands, despite resistance in some places.
Trade depression
A severe trade depression in the late 1830s brought growing opposition to the Poor Law, especially in the North. The Chartists attacked the law, and women joined in the fight. Family members were separated from each other in the workhouses. Fergus O'Connor, in the Northern Star newspaper, urged taking up arms if necessary, to rid the country of "this damnable law". In Yorkshire at a public meeting in 1838 a Mrs Grasby asked how a mother could be expected to forget her suckling child. A month later the female reformers mustered in strong numbers and treated the Guardians to a roll in the snow.
In fact the Guardians increasingly resorted to outdoor relief, which was often cheaper to provide than indoor relief, and so by 1850 only 110,000 paupers out of a million were in the workhouses, mostly the old and the sick. But the law created a fear of the workhouse and made poverty seem an even greater disgrace than in past. Many would prefer to rely on friends and relatives, and others put their energies into self-help schemes through friendly societies and later the trade union movement, which were later to form the basis for a social welfare system administered by the state.
Thanks to their efforts, we have come a long way from the workhouse, but we are still living with outdoor relief and the employers who use it to profit from offering temporary or seasonal work and poverty
