Liberals; 1906-1914 The Liberal Reforms – Points to Note ~ They were an impressive legislative achievement ~ The Liberals were seen to be responding to specifically identified social problems ~ For the first time the state was interfering in matters previously considered to be the duty and responsibility of the individual; the diet and health of children, the standard of living of the aged poor, the levels of wages and hours of adult workers, unemployment. ~ The poor were no longer to be considered as inferior, but were accepted as unfortunate but equal citizens ~ The roles of Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill need to be noted. Liberal Timeline 1905. December; Balfour’s Govt resigns. 1906.
Cooke ‘it was the conservative party, not Gladstone, which came closest to solving the Irish question in the late 19th century’ In terms of the economy, the Conservatives indefinably did the most to address the economic issues of Ireland. The liberals in actual fact were not the progressive party in dealing with the economy. Unlike conservative policy at the turn of the 20th century, the liberals did not address the root of the problem. An example of this would be the tithes act 1836 was only passed to stop the land war. The Liberal party were not seen favourably post famine with historians claiming “no man died of famine while Peel was in power”.
The first main difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives in the mid-1860s is their beliefs. The Liberals led by William Gladstone, were general believers of Gladstonian Liberalism. This was essentially “peace reform and retrenchment”. Gladstone’s own financial policies that were based on balanced budgets, low taxes, and laissez-faire (self-help) were better suited to the developing capitalist society of Britain in the mid-1860s. The Liberals were not very big supporters of the Monarch and wanted the Monarchy out of the political area and it just to be solely the government.
Before the Liberal Reforms of 1905, poverty was an ever present endemic within the working-class of Britain. The general attitude towards those who suffered from poverty, as defined by ideas of Victorian Liberalism, gave the government little imperative to take any real action against poverty. However, after two major studies on the conditions of England had been conducted by Seebohm Rowntree and Charles Booth, the Liberal government introduced a series reforms aimed at improving the lives of the poor. Naturally there is a degree of importance to these two studies concerning how they led to government awareness of poverty; however a series of events around this era also served as possible catalysts for the introduction of social reforms, for example, the Boer War displayed the impact of poverty on war, which compromised the British concept of imperialism at the time. The main question is to what extent were the social reforms of the Liberal Government between 1905 and 1914 a response to more in depth knowledge about the extent and impact of poverty in British affairs.
This leads on to another cause that led to the Chartism movement, the disappointment of the 1832 Reform Act. Leading up to the act, working classes had given massive support to the middle class led campaign for the act, with the hope of legislation to help them. Although it was passed by the Whigs, the working class were dissatisfied because it did not enfranchise them and they were still left without the vote. Whigs regarded the act as the final change in the electoral system, but Chartists labelled it just the beginning. Although we’ve only listed two causes in detail there were many more that led to the Chartist
This is called the liberal new right or neoliberalism. Liberal new right was a product of the end of the long boom of the 1970’s that saw a revival in free market thinking and resulted in the ideas that there should be minimal state intervention in the economy. Free market economics (Friedman and Hayek) gained credibility in the1970’s because the government failed to deliver economic stability and sustained growth using Keynesian demand management. Due to stagflation (high unemployment and inflation) Freidman and Hayek argued the government was to blame. Freidman argued that there was a natural rate of unemployment and that attempts to reduce unemployment lead to other problems like inflation.
These factors led to a fragile liberal government, with the main threat in my opinion being posed not by the nationalists but the socialists. The PSI was founded in 1895 and soon became a strong threat to the liberal government. They were fiercely opposed to the liberal regime, saying it was a cover for the capitalist exploitation of Italian working classes, and used evidence that wages were still low and hours were still long in comparison to the rest of Western Europe. Also welfare benefits compared unfavourably. This led to strong support of the socialists from working classes, so much so that a relatively new party was winning over 20% of the vote by 1913.
Source A was written in 1902, at which point the Conservatives were in power, and had made many mistakes such as decisions about the Boer War, through Balfour. On top of this, the Liberals were getting stronger and more popular, and their ideas (such as free trade and Campbell-Bannerman’s broadchurch approach), were appealing more and more to the public. Source D, however, was written in 1911, when the Liberals had been in power since their ‘landslide victory’ in 1906, winning by a huge majority. Despite the decrease in support since then, the Liberals were still popular, as they had brought in some popular reforms such as the Trade Disputes Act in 1906, and the introduction of old age pensions in
When this failed to produce support Alexander II began in 1859 to use reforming ministers, such as Miliukin and Samarin to plan changes. The emancipation act, which was signed in 1861, can be seen as a huge personal achievement; however the Tsar Liberator did not wish to introduce real economic freedom to the peasants, nor for them to receive equality before the law. The nobles remained the privileged class and indeed their share of wealth increased. Emancipation can therefore be seen a traditional rather than a drastic change to Russian society. In 1864 the creation of the first elected governments, Zemstvos happened.
How successful was the Nazi economic policy? The Nazis had 4 aims/ problems once in power which the economic policy was supposed to be a solution for- the unemployment problem left from the Weimar era and the great depression, the lack of military forces and equipment available after the restrictions of Versailles, the lack of self-sufficiency of Germany as a country and they needed to provide a better quality of life for all Germans to ensure full support for the Fuhrer. I will be arguing that the economic policy was an overall success, but with areas of no improvement. Unemployment was tackled first, in a variety of different ways. Public expenditure and investments were increased in order to renew an industrial and business confidence in the economy.