Wheatley Housing Act 1924

The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924 (14 & 15 Geo. V c. 35) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. The act increased government subsidies to be paid to local authorities to build housing for rent for low paid workers from £6 to £9. It also extended the time over which the subsidy was paid from 20 to 40 years. Around 508,000 houses were built under this act.

The act was introduced by the first Labour government, and was also known as the Wheatley Housing Act after John Wheatley the minister who introduced it.



​Welfare State

The Beveridge Report of 1942, (which identified five "Giant Evils" in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease) essentially recommended a national, compulsory, flat rate insurance scheme which would combine health care, unemployment and retirement benefits. Beveridge himself was careful to emphasize that unemployment benefits should be held to a subsistence level, and after six months would be conditional on work or training, so as not to encourage abuse of the system. After its victory in the United Kingdom general election, 1945 the Labour Party pledged to eradicate the Giant Evils, and undertook policy measures to provide for the people of the United Kingdom "from the cradle to the grave."

 

This policy resulted in massive expenditure and a great widening of what was considered to be the state's responsibility. In addition to the central services of education, health, unemployment and sickness allowances, the welfare state also included the idea of increasing redistributive taxation, increasing regulation of industry food and housing (better safety regulations, weights and measures controls, etc.)
However the initial foundation of the National Health Service (NHS) did not involve building new hospitals but merely the nationalisation of existing municipal and charitable foundations. The aim was not to substantially increase provision but to standardise care across the country; indeed Beveridge believed that the overall cost of medical care would decrease, as people became healthier and so needed less treatment. Instead the cost rose dramatically, from £9 billion in 1948 (accounting for inflation) to £106 billion in 2011, and charges (for dentures, spectacles and prescriptions) were introduced in 1951 (by the same Labour government that had founded the NHS three years earlier). Despite this, the principle of health care "free at the point of use" became a central idea of the welfare state, which later governments, critical of the Welfare State, were unable to reverse. The classic Welfare State period lasted from approximately 1945 to the late-1970s, when policies under Thatcherism began to privatise public institutions, although many features remain today, including compulsory National Insurance contributions, and the provision of old age pensions.
The Labour Party, standing in 1945 on a programme of establishing a Welfare State, won a clear victory. However, since the 1980s the British government has begun to reduce some provisions in England: for example, free eye tests for all have now been stopped and prescription charges for drugs have constantly risen since they were first introduced in 1951. Policies differ in different countries of the United Kingdom, but the provision of a welfare state is still a basic principle of government policy in the United Kingdom today.

Critics of the welfare state claim that, in relieving citizens of personal responsibility for their own welfare, the government has inadvertently encouraged irresponsible and immature attitudes, with the result that squalor, ignorance, and idleness are common.In 1980, T. E. Utley, wrote that the welfare state was "an arrangement under which we all largely cease to be responsible for our own behaviour and in return become responsible for everyone else's. The temptations which this way of doing things offers to synthetic anger, fraudulent penitence, all other forms of hypocrisy and the sheer evasion of duty are infinitely too strong for fallen man".





The great social-leveling influence of the War meant that Britains were anxious for change. Countless thousands of returning soldiers and sailors wanted a turn-around in the status quo. Members of British armed forces were considerably better educated than they had been in World War I. The soldier returning from the war was no longer in awe of his leaders; he had mixed loyalties. He was resentful of unemployment, wishing for a greater share in the nation's post-war restructuring, and he did not trust a Conservative government to tackle the enormous social economic and political problems, that they had done very little to solve between the wars. He wished for a change.

As a consequence, Winston Churchill, who led Britain to victory during the war, found himself as a member of the opposition when the election of 1945 returned the Labour Party to power with a huge majority. Under the Parliament of Clement Attlee, the new government began some of the greatest changes in Britain's long history---nothing less than a reconstruction of the nation.

The Labour Government struggled heroically to deal with the problems: to improve standards of living, move to a "mixed economy." close the trade gap, maintain its armed forces in sufficient strength to meet a new threat from Communist Russia, and to keep of its overseas bases. It succeeded in these aims remarkably well. During the dark early days of the War, economist William Beveridge had put forward proposals for postwar "cradle-to-grave" social security. The Government had taken on an emergency welfare responsibility; it provided milk for babies; orange juice and cod-liver oil for children.

It was now time for Labour to put the Beverage Plan into full operation. Family allowances had already been introduced before the War's end. A National School Lunch Act was passed in June, 1946. In 1948, the government introduced the National Health Service to proved free medical treatment for all, from the spectacles and false teeth, to maternity and child welfare services. Nationalization of the hospitals made nationwide care available for the injured and seriously ill. The "Welfare State" had begun.

The second major change brought about by the Labour Government, under Attlee, was to take control of industry and public utilities, and a two-year period beginning in 1946, saw the nationalization of the Bank of England; the coal industry; electricity and gas; air transport, along with road, rail and waterways. A total of 20 percent of all British industry had been taken into public ownership by 1950. (In August, 1947, the government operated its first atomic pile, at Harwell). Central control of the economy, which had proved so successful in wartime, was now a major undertaking in peacetime. It was achieved under terribly adverse economic conditions. Another crisis occurred in 1947.

Stringent financial measures, imposed to meet the enormous war debt, caused undue hardship that was only made worse by one of the worst winters on record, monstrous gales and floods wiped out farms and destroyed agricultural products. A fuel shortage severely curtailed exports, food was still severely rationed, and in 1948 even bread and potatoes were rationed (both had been exempt during the War). The author remembers well the little ditty "It had to B.U." that parodied a popular song of the time by referring to the Bread Unit.

In 1947, relief appeared in the form of the Marshall Plan, introduced by the US to help the European Economy recover. Along with the devaluation of the pound and an expansion of world markets, there was a revival of the spirit that had united the country during the War. The introduction of the Land-Rover to world markets in 1948 was a godsend for British exports. Britain was even able to join with the US in ferrying supplies to Berlin in the famous "Airlift" that began in July of that year. By 1950, rationing began to be phased out, though not until 1954 was meat rationing abolished.

Though the Labour Government did very little to develop the private sector, it can take credit for the building of giant hydro-electric schemes in the later 1940's, especially in the undeveloped areas of Scotland and Wales. In 1951, the Conservatives resumed control of the government. Under its slogan "You've Never Had It So Good," led by the ageing Winston Churchill,