Causes Of The Liberal Reforms By Booth And Rowntre

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28/12/11 Social Reforms Essay To what extent were the Liberal Social Reforms of 1906-1914 in response to the Booth and Rowntree reports? Although there were social changes before hand, between 1906 and 1914, the Liberals launched into one of the biggest social reforms in British political history. Before this, the government’s attitudes to the welfare of its people in the nineteenth century is a phrase called ‘Laissez-fare’ meaning, quite simply, the government didn’t believe it was their duty to interfere with the lives of the people and that the individuals should be responsible for the state of their own lives. However, the findings of The Booth and Rowntree reports were one of the few significant moving factors of the government abandoning of Laissez-fare with shockingly realistic statistics. There were also other key factors such as the ideas of new liberalism, national efficiency, political pragmatism and national security to be taken into consideration of why the government changed its policy. It can be argued that the investigations of Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree results into Britain’s poverty were a significant motivating factor behind social reform in the nineteenth century. It revealed the true and mainly unsuspected levels of poverty which the wealthier classes of Britain were unaware of and was difficult to ignore as it was based on hard scientific data that the Victorians admired greatly and not simply an opinion by leading the government by abandoning its policy and adapting a more interventionist approach. The first investigation was conducted by Charles Booth, originally a Liverpool ship owner but by 1889 a London businessman, who doubted the claims of socialists that a quarter of the population lived in extreme poverty. At first he believed that the level of poverty in Britain was limited and could be dealt with by charity.
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