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You may remember, if you have read the Victorian times, that there were two main political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. A Liberal government was elected in 1906 with a majority of 129 seats. They began to introduce a lot of reforms in an attempt to help workers and the poor. In 1909 the Chancellor, David Lloyd George, introduced what he called a “people's budget”.
He had earlier introduced the first state pension. It started in January 1909 and was paid to all people over 70 who had an income of less than £21 a year. Things were a lot different then money-wise and I have set out some figures in the link at the bottom of this section. Just as a guide, the average wage for a man in 1910 was £70 a year and for a woman it was £30 a year. The pension was 5 shillings a week which is the same as 25p in the money we use now. A married man got 7 shillings and sixpence (38p). In those days only about 25% of the population reached the age of 70.
In the “people's budget” Lloyd George proposed that there should be a vast increase on tax paid for owning land and by people on high incomes in order to pay for his social reforms and also to pay for improvements to the Royal Navy. He declared that his budget was a war budget, to wage war against poverty and squalidness. He was supported by another Liberal MP who was President of the Board of Trade. His name was Winston Churchill. The two were know as the “Terrible Twins”.
The bill passed the House of Commons but the House of Lords rejected it. There then began a battle between the elected MP's in the House of Commons and the members of the House of Lords. Lloyd George referred to the House of Lords as “ a body of 500 men chosen at random from the ranks of the unemployed”.
The Liberals held a general election in January 1910 but actually lost their majority although they had two more MPs than the Conservatives and could only continue with support from the Irish Parliamentary Party (sounds familiar). They tried again in December 1910 and ended up with only 1 MP more and again had to rely on the Irish Parliamentary Party. By now the newly formed Labour Party had 42 MPs.
Eventually the House of Lords passed the budget and then the Prime Minster, Herbert Asquith, introduced the Parliament Act in 1911 which severely limited the power of the House of Lords to make sure this couldn't happen again. The Act said the Lords could not stop any bills relating to finance and any other veto they might have was restricted to a maximum delay of 2 years. Obviously the House of Lords didn't go a bundle on this but the King, it was by now George V, intervened and threatened to create a lot of Liberal peers who would out vote the conservative majority. This law is still in force today and was strengthened by another Act in 1949.
Meanwhile, Lloyd George was pressing on with other reforms and introduced the National Insurance Act in 1911. This provided health insurance for industrial workers and was the beginning of our welfare system. Contributions came from the government, employers and employees. There was also a form of temporary unemployment benefit to be paid to people in industries that had periods of quiet, i.e. the building industry in winter and saw mills when there was no wood to saw.
Click here to see some other figures for prices in 1910.
David Lloyd George was asked to become Prime Minister in 1916 and remained so until 1922. Many credited him with being a major reason that Britain and its allies triumphed in the war.
Forward to 1910AD
