United Kingdom

However, much of this new relationship of state and society was still recognizably liberal in the older sense, constituting a compact of social and individual responsibility. At the heart of this compact was the belief that it was necessary to safeguard the individual from the unfettered operation of the free market, while at the same time making sure that there must be an obligation to obtain gainful employment. Contributory pension schemes required individuals to make regular payments into them rather than providing social insurance from general taxation. The National Insurance Act provided a framework within which workers were to practice self-help, and, although involvement was mandatory, the administration of the legislation was largely through voluntary institutions. David Lloyd George, who did most to push the legislation through, himself combined these characteristics of old and new liberalism. At the same time, in practice this new formula of government emerged in a very piecemeal and haphazard way, often driven by the circumstances of the moment, not least the circumstances of party politics. Moreover, the circumstances of war were of overwhelming importance. It was World War I in particular that fostered the idea of the increased importance of the interventionist, collectivist state. The demands of winning the war required an unparalleled intervention in a running of the economy and in the operations of social life, particularly when the radical Liberal Lloyd George took power in 1916. Perhaps the most important factor legitimizing the increased role of the state was conscription in the armed services, and the most important general outcome was the idea that “planning” (understood in many different ways) was from this point forward a fully legitimate part of governmental enterprise. Nonetheless, despite the piecemeal nature of the change, what is striking is how this understanding of the relationship between state and society obtained across the whole political spectrum and how it lasted so long. This increased role of the state was accompanied, after World War I, by the increasing specialization and professionalization of an expanding civil service.

The political situation

Gladstone and Chamberlain

Gladstone’s second administration (1880–85) did not live up to the promise of its election victory. Indeed, in terms of political logic, it seemed likely in 1880 that the Gladstonian Liberal Party would eventually split into Whig and radical components, the latter to be led by Joseph Chamberlain. This development was already foreshadowed in the cabinet that Gladstone assembled, which was neither socially uniform nor politically united. Eight of the 11 members were Whigs, but one of the other three—Chamberlain—represented a new and aggressive urban radicalism, less interested in orthodox statements of liberal individualism than in the uncertain aspiration and striving of the different elements in the mass electorate. At the opposite end of the spectrum from Chamberlain’s municipal socialism were the Whigs, the largest group in the cabinet but the smallest group in the country. Many of them were already abandoning the Liberal Party; all of them were nervous about the kind of radical program that Chamberlain and the newly founded National Liberal Federation (1877) were advocating and about the kind of caucus-based party organization that Chamberlain favoured locally and nationally. For the moment, however, Gladstone was the man of the hour, and Chamberlain himself conceded that he was indispensable.

Joseph Chamberlain, detail of an oil painting by Frank Holl, 1886; in the National Portrait Gallery, LondonCourtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

The government carried out a number of important reforms culminating in the Third Reform Act of 1884 and the Redistribution Act of 1885. The former continued the trend toward universal male suffrage by giving the vote to agricultural labourers, thereby tripling the electorate, and the latter robbed 79 towns with populations under 15,000 of their separate representation. For the first time the franchise reforms ignored the traditional claims of property and wealth and rested firmly on the democratic principle that the vote ought to be given to people as a matter of right, not of expediency.