The British Unemployment Assistance Crisis of 1935

Miller, Fredric

doi:10.1177/002200947901400208

Cited by 9 publications

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“…It was, however, short-lived, being abolished following social protests about rates of unemployment assistance in the early months of 1935 and the introduction of the Standstill Act 1935 that forced the UAB to pay whichever was higher of its scale rates or those paid by local PACs (Miller, 1979).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Grover

2024

Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

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Before the introduction of the household benefit cap in the UK in 2013 the previous mechanism there limited the income of social assistance recipients was the wage stop, operating for four decades between 1935 and 1975. Similar to the benefit cap, the wage stop reflected and reproduced concerns with incentivising unemployed people to labour. This raises questions about why the wage stop was abolished in the mid-1970s when worries about unemployment continued, particularly its intersections with out-of-work benefits. It is widely argued that the abolition of the wage stop was a consequence of lobbying by the Child Poverty Action Group. Drawing upon records held at the UK’s National Archives, this article argues that this is an over-simplified explanation that, first, ignores concerns with the wage stop that pre-dated the Child Poverty Action Group’s criticism of it, including concerns within the assistance boards with its administration. And, second, while by the mid-1970s there was (albeit ambiguous) concern with the impacts of the wage stop, there was a shift in approach that emphasised the supplementation of low wages with social security benefits, rather than forcing social assistance below the assessed needs of households, as being a preferable means of ensuring the incentive to take wage-labour.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Grover

2024

Journal of Poverty and Social Justice

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“…1.3 This brief paper rejects such arguments and suggests that social protest cannot be adequately explained unless the material context – issues related to poverty and inequality – is considered, for it is no coincidence that social protest tends to emerge at periods of acute economic hardship and to a large extent involves people who are from the income poorest groups. This has been the case across history; from the ‘food riots’ of the 18th century to protests about the operation of the poor law and the spread of livelihood destroying mechanisation in the 19th century, to food riots in 1916/17 and protests against the way public and unemployment assistance was operated between the first and second world wars (Coles, 1978, Thompson, 1971, Miller, 1979, Hannington, 1936), to the protests of 1981 that were framed by a conjunction of injustices related to policing, racial disadvantage and discrimination, and an economic environment denoted by rising mass unemployment, particularly among young people (Scarman, 1981, Unsworth, 1982). In contrast to involving feckless and irresponsible people, social protest is the consequence of the operation of socially and culturally embedded economic processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Protest in 2011: Material and Cultural Aspects of Economic Inequalities

Grover

2011

Sociological Research Online

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The wave of social protest that swept across England in August 2011 has predominantly been explained by political elites through appeals to various approaches that have in common individualistic frameworks of reference. Issues related to the material condition of society are either little analysed or, among the political elite, ruled out as an explanation of the protests. However, it is clear from both the historical literature on social protest and the contemporary literature on relationships between crime and inequality that explanations ignoring inequalities, particularly economic inequalities, are problematic.

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Remaking the Party? 1931–9

Thorpe¹

1997

A History of the British Labour Party

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The British Unemployment Assistance Crisis of 1935

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK

Social Protest in 2011: Material and Cultural Aspects of Economic Inequalities

Remaking the Party? 1931–9

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