SOURCE A

W.J.Braithewaite, the civil servant who planned the 1911 National Insurance scheme comments on how it was received.

The reception of the Bill had been very friendly. There had, however, been one discordant note from Mr Handel Booth, MP for Pontefract. He had made himself spokesman for the Industrial Insurance interest group, far the most formidable interest group affected by the Bill. It was just as if we had poked a stick into a wasps nest as such a group was trying hard to sting the new proposals to death. Politically and socially these groups were very strong. They had only to set their insurance agents to work to spread, what was a whispering campaign, from door to door to ruin the Liberal Party. The insurance agents in the course of business called at the vast majority of homes in the country once a week regularly and knew the occupiers very well.

Diary entry made in 1911.

SOURCE B

The medical profession’s initial reaction to the National Insurance proposals.

Reports from all over the country show that the GPs are, to an extent never witnessed before, thoroughly roused and more than discontented that the measure, intended for the good of the working classes in the first place, should have been framed in a way which must inevitably inflict irreparable damage on the medical profession if the provisions affecting its interests do not undergo drastic amendment. The profession will, we believe, resist to the bitter end a scheme which will place it under the control of the Friendly Societies and at their mercy.

The British Medical Journal, May, 1911.

SOURCE C

The Times newspaper expresses a view on how much working people should contribute to the National Insurance scheme.

Persons earning more than £2 a week are quite able to afford a moderate fee, and most of them prefer to pay it. But as regards manual workers – the weekly wage-earners whom we call workmen – the difficulty is that no line has ever been drawn, there is no machinery for drawing it and any attempt to draw it would raise such a howl from a pampered class that no politician would ever dare to face it. According to prevalent notions every ‘working man’ is a poor wretch, struggling to keep body and soul together in a foul slum. This idea is rooted in profound ignorance, watered by gush and warmed by fiction.

The Times, June, 1911.

SOURCE D

A statement by six dissidents of the Labour Party about the National Insurance Bill.

We have opposed the Bill, first because of its contributory character. By extracting contributions from the workers to finance so-called schemes of social reforms, we are not only adopting a policy which can bring no real improvement, but we are continuing a practice which two generations of experience have proved to be ineffective and impractical. The method of compelling the employers to pay according to the amount of labour they employ instead of upon the profits they make is certain to fall as an additional burden upon the workpeople. It will encourage the displacement of labour by machinery, it will add to the cost of commodities and it will be an excuse for resisting demands for higher wages. We also object to the Bill because it does not give relief to those who stand most in need of it and who are least able to help themselves

A statement made to the press in the summer of 1911.

SOURCE E

The Fabian socialist Beatrice Webb provides her view on the flaws in the proposal for a National Insurance scheme.

The big fault of the Act is the creation of huge vested interests – the Industrial Insurance Companies’ method of collection and the Panel system of medical attendance. These vested interests mean not only a waste of public money and financial chaos but wholesale demoralizaton of character through the fraudulent getting of benefits.

Diary entry made in 1912.