Past and Present on British Welfare State
Event Type: Branch
Takes Place: 17th April 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Fellowship House, 136a Willifield Way, London NW11 6YD
Description: The first measures of what later became the ‘Welfare State’ came from 1906 under a Liberal government supported by the recently founded Labour Party. They included the first state pensions, National Health and Unemployment Insurance. A reason for this was the public response to surveys by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree which revealed more extensive poverty than expected, due above all to low pay and precarious employment. Publicly funded welfare then gradually expanded, until from 1945 the Labour government implemented a more fully developed ‘Welfare State’. Whereas in the 1900s the discovery of poverty led to the beginnings of the Welfare State, the main cause of poverty now is the decline of the welfare state.
How to book: Just turn up
Price: £5
Tel: 07818063594
Email: mandycaller@googlemail.com
Organiser: Mandy Caller
Lecturer: Professor Patricia Thane
Comments: Her book The Rise and Fall of the British Welfare State. From Poverty in 1900 to Poverty in 2023, will be published by Bloomsbury later in 2024. Professor Patricia M. Thane is Visiting Professor in History at Birkbeck College, London
Region: London
Branch: Hampstead and North West London