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Industrial Welfare and Labour Regulation in Britain at the Time of the First World War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
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War, it has been asserted, stimulates the development of public welfare. Increased physical and social mobility, fostered by wartime conditions, exposes social inequalities and injustices, gives rise to demands for redress and thereby encourages government to introduce social reforms. This argument implies that, in order to maintain national solidarity in the face of a common enemy, central government becomes more sensitive to external political demands and thereby more – rather than less – responsive to democratic pressure. Certainly, during the First World War, it is possible to see increased state involvement in a number of initiatives designed to effect social improvement. This article examines one of them. It aims to analyse the role of central government in stimulating the development of private industrial welfare in Britain during this period. However, as will be shown below, the growth of industrial welfare – especially in the latter part of the war – was not designed to further industrial democracy. Rather,the form it took implicitly placed new constraints on the right of organised labour to demand improvements in working conditions. Although outwardly the industrial welfare movement sponsored by government seemed to win benefits for the working man, the use of scientific method to legitimate these improvements did not imply an increase in the power of organised labour to determine working conditions.
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- Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1980
References
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