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Week 3: Mutual Aid and the State in Nineteenth Century Europe

CLASS DISCUSSION POINTSWe hope the answers to these questions will become apparent as we move through our presentation.

What organisations offered help to sick unemployed or elderly workers before 1914?

What type of organisation dominated in Britain, France, Germany?

What were the effects of official subsidies (pre 1939)?

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Intervention took on different guises in different countries.

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In Britain the Poor Law Act of 1834 sought to encourage the population to fend for itself.

Social stigma associated with pauperism pushed all sections of the British working population into self help.

Mutual policies taken out entirely voluntarily.

Workhouse regimes austere and vicious.

Paupers viewed by Government as victims of their own indolent circumstance.

A liberal system of mutuality on the back of a laissez faire doctrine.

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Edwin Chadwick one of the 1832 Poor Law Commissioners

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Germany’s mutuality and state welfare were administered by means of compulsory legislation.

Workers subscribed to Mutual Societies as did the British.

Subscriptions made compulsory by legislation in 1845.

Compulsory legislation saw the inclusion of all industrial workers.

The Elberfield system.

Hilfenkassen or Help Funds were state intervened to ensure their solvency.

The 1850’s saw the expansion of provident funds and mutual benefit funds.

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The German Social Democratic Party

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France had no national system of poor relief.

The Catholic Church supported the monarchy.

Solidarity was based upon the remit of repaying social and central to the republican way of life.

Familialism.

Ones social debt would be all the greater if you produced no children to safeguard the future.

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Napoleon III

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Friendly Societies in Britain date back to the late 18th century.

Women too complicated.

Friendly Societies were funded by contributions from the workforce.

Collectives like the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows had considerable wealth

Members comprised mostly skilled workers initially since poorer workers could not afford to pay subscriptions.

Term Oddfellows coined as workers from unguilded trades collected together.

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In Germany the left wing social democratic party helped create Mutual funds.

Unions were not all about strikes and demands.

SPD did lean towards strike action.

Timing was perhaps unfortunate.

Reichstag was introduced in 1866.

Strike pay was not permitted.

Free trades unions were supressed altogether in the 1880’s

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France had no discernible trades unions or mutual aid societies.

Mutuelles were set up.

Centrally registered and run by notables; ratified in Paris.

Mutuelles provided wide ranging help for the poor and less well paid.

Measures were despised by the ‘commune ists’.

Mutuelles evolved and in 1898 central control was abolished in favour of community based Mutualities.

Today the Mutuelles have over 35 million members.

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Britain promoted the laissez faire approach to welfare, free of state intervention and promoting independence and self help with workhouses as a deterrent to being poor. Trades Unions grew and became more militant as time progressed.

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Germany used social benefits to build a power base but with the Social Democratic Party being quashed by Bismark before they became too militant.

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France became revolutionary. They wanted solidarity, to promote self help and to help each other.

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All three countries picked up and refashioned mutuality in one form or another, which became embedded into the roots of the welfare state