What distinguished the massive wave of unemployment that swept through Britain in the interwar years from the previous problems of unemployment was that it was brought about by the 'structural' difficulties that British industry and economy had endure...
What distinguished the massive wave of unemployment that swept through Britain in the interwar years from the previous problems of unemployment was that it was brought about by the 'structural' difficulties that British industry and economy had endured since the later nineteenth century. The notion of 'structural unemployment' thus became one of the centerpieces of industrial and social controversy of contemporary Britain. Although the long-term prosperity and the attendant 'full employment' following the Second World War appeared to have expelled unemployment from the vocabularies of public discussion, the tremendous increase in the number of unemployed from the mid-1970s again brought to mind that the debate over 'the right to work' was still at the heart of social and political issues of British society. There were similarities between the unemployment of the interwar years and that of the later twentieth century in that they were both massive and structural. There were, however, important differences as well, for example, in the regional concentration of unemployment and public attitudes toward unemployment benefits.
Compared with the period prior to WWI, the twentieth-century experience revealed marked continuities with the past. This was particularly true of the ways in which the state responded to the problem of unemployment. The most salient characteristic was that all British governments, regardless of their ideological and political differences, have concentrated on lessening the pain of the unemployed rather than removing the causes of unemployment and creating jobs. The Old and New Poor Laws as well as the Labour Exchange were mainly concerned, not with providing new jobs but with reducing the economic sufferings caused by unemployment. The 1911 National Insurance Act and its expansion in the interwar decades, and the 'welfare state' after WWII, by and large followed this tradition. In order to receive unemployment benefits the applicants should prove that they were actively searching a job, and had to go through the notorious, insufferable means test. The benefits were always below the minimum wages, unemployment allowances could be denied to the unemployed women whose husbands were in work, and relief to the young applicants could be refused except on condition of occupational training. The twentieth-century call for eradicating welfare 'scroungers' had an undeniable continuity not only with the principle of 'less eligibility' the New Poor Law was based on, but with the Victorian dichotomization of the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor.