The British Unemployment Assistance Program

Abstract

HE provision of the means of subsistence for those without income or with insufficient income has been a public issue in Great Britain ever since the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. A national policy was first crystallized in the famous Elizabethan Poor Law of i6oi. This law remained the basis of general poor relief administration in both Great Britain and the United States for over four hundred years, although the law, the administrative structure and the procedure were changed many times. The most important principles embodied in the Poor Law of Elizabeth and later times were (i) the responsibility of the state for giving aid to the needy, (2) financing and administration of relief by the local government authorities, (3) eligibility for relief based upon a means test, (4) the pauper status of the recipient of relief, and (5) the necessity of legal settlement. The first major break from the Poor Law principles came with the enactment of social insurance legislation, of which the unemployment insurance law of I9II was an important part. Certain occupations were selected under this law for insurance coverage. The persons in these occupations henceforth, if they worked the minimum number of weeks in a two-year period, received insurance benefits as a matter of right for a maximum of 2.6 weeks in a calendar year and were freed from the necessity of seeking poor relief dulring long periods of unemployment. Insurance rested upon a whole new set of principles; the only one in any way common to the Poor Law was the fact of recognition by the state that it had a responsibility to see that persons without income through no fault of their own should be maintained. It was widely believed that insured persons would be removed entirely from the need of Poor Law Assistance. But after the World War this viewpoint had to be revised. During the war period new occupations were taken into the insurance scheme, and in i9Z0 the law was amended to include the large majority of all manual workers and many lowsalaried white-collar employees. The prolonged depression of business in Great Britain after i9Z0 created successive emergencies in the insurance system. Discharged soldiers were granted Out-ofWork Donations by the Government for a time, but in March, i9ai, this plan was discontinued, and a new uncovenanted, or extended, benefit was provided to persons out of the insurance funds. Persons were granted benefits from the Unemployment Fund beyond the period for which they had any statutory right, and many of them received the uncovenanted benefit without having acquired rights by virtue of contributions. In order to avoid throwing hundreds of thousands of people back on to poor relief the Government arranged to make loans from the Exchequer to the Unemployment Fund for the purpose of carrying the unemployed through the period of depression. This came to be known as the dole. It was in fact a national relief scheme, except that claimants were not subject to a means test. * Read at the joint meeting of the American Sociological Society and the American Association for Labor Legislation, Dec. 29, 1938.