An Example Of An Individual's Impact On The Liberal Reform From 1901-11

Liberal Reforms II

Charles Booth

An example of an individual who did impact on the Liberal Reform period from 1901-11 was Charles Booth, a social reformer who worked to document the lives and living conditions of the poor working class in London. Booth did not agree with the previously accepted view propagated by the COS that the poor were responsible for their own condition. Instead he followed on from progressives, such as Henry Mayhew, arguing that poverty was caused by circumstance. He also ‘rejected the socialist argument that the capitalist system itself was the cause of poverty’ .

After becoming involved with the Mansion House Inquiry into Unemployment in 1885, 17 years later Booth completed his project that attempted to investigate

Balfour was the leader of the opposition, and as a Conservative, inherently opposed to any welfare reforms. More specifically Balfour was opposed to the bureaucratic implications of an old age pension scheme, and he argued that ‘we ought not to throw the whole power over these 7.5 millions entirely into the hands of these very subordinate civil servants who are made practically the distributors of this gigantic national SUBVENTION according to their own views of justice and equity’ (quoted in The Times 2nd July 1908 in parliamentary debate)

Improved organisation of the Liberal Party meant that they were able to contest a higher proportion of seats in 1906 than in the 1900 election, which allowed them the opportunity to win more seats and thus gain a better chance of winning the election. Furthermore the Gladstone-MacDonald Pact of 1903 was a secret electoral agreement between the Labour and Liberal parties stating that the Liberal party would not field candidates in seats where the Labour Party was also standing. This prevented the anti-conservative vote from being split between the parties, and was especially important in seats where the Conservative candidate was weak. Thus it allowed Labour and the Liberals to make definitive gains to the detriment of the Conservatives, for example 24 of the 29 Labour Mps elected in 1906 were in seats where the liberals did not stand due to the Pact