The Expansion of Social Work in Britain

Philip Seed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032221809
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000562521
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1973, The Expansion of Social Work in Britain presents an overview of the history of social work to develop an understanding of what modern social work 'is' and of what the rapid expansion of social work 'means' as a social phenomenon. Divided into three parts, Part I examines the traditions and the forms of social action in the nineteenth century from which social work originated. Part II presents the period following the Second World War and concentrate particularly on the development of family casework in relation to what was sometimes called 'the problem of the problem family.' Part III examines the context of the expansion of social work in Britain into the field of community work. This book is an essential read for students of social work and social work professionals.

PART I

Social conflict and the origins of social work

1

The philanthropic tradition and the national image

The term ‘social work’ was first used in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century in connection with the activities of people who had a sense of belonging to a movement which aimed at social advance based on disciplined and principled forms of social action. Social work was an attempt to find more realistic remedies to social problems and to social distress than traditional forms of philanthropy and charity.

Philanthropy and charity

These were both much older terms than social work. Philanthropy was the activity of giving away money for the public good. The philanthropist was a wealthy man who was ‘public spirited’. Charity was the object for which the money was given.

The scale of philanthropy was impressive. From Tudor times until the end of the nineteenth century it was a social necessity for large sections of the upper and middle classes. The charitable objects of philanthropy covered a wide range of what we would nowadays call social services including, for example, schools, hospitals, apprenticeships and aid to prisoners, as well as specifically religious causes.

The machinery for dispensing charity varied. It included established institutions within the churches, associations and private trusts specially created for charitable purposes, and private individuals acting on their own initiative. Parliament allowed these activities to flourish, in some ways promoted them, but did not attempt to regularise them or co-ordinate their efforts into anything like a national social policy. Charity existed alongside the official system of poor relief and, in dealing with poverty, it was often considered more significant. Speaking of the period from 1480 to 1660 Jordan (1960), an authority on the subject, says: ‘Though remedial legislation was adopted it was our conclusion that men of the age reposed their principal confidence in private charity, gathered through the instrumentality of the private trust into large and disciplined aggregates of wealth with which formidably effective social institutions could be founded and endowed.’

The social theories and the objectives of charity varied with the age. The emphasis was sometimes on the act of giving: to secure felicity to the giver or as a responsibility of stewardship that went with the right to accumulate wealth. At other times a greater emphasis was placed on the charitable objective such as a recognised need amongst the poor, the misfits or other groups, or in a national emergency for the population more generally. Charity could be seen as part of a permanent duty to relieve the poor who must always exist in society just as there should always be rich people or it was part of a utopian scheme to end poverty altogether. It could be either parochial or ‘universal’ in its appeal. The most significant facts about philanthropy are its permanence, importance and ubiquitous existence in town and country alike over a long period of more than 300 years.

Boulding’s concept of the ‘image’ applied to philanthropy

To understand further the role of philanthropy and charity as social institutions in Britain from which social work developed, we will use Boulding’s concept of The image’ (1958): ‘What I am talking about … is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this image that largely governs my behaviour.’ In applying the concept to the political process he suggests the importance of ‘symbolic images’ and ‘value images’ which serve as a kind of ‘rough summation or index of a vast complexity of images of roles and structures’. Similar ideas are discussed in relation to international aifairs by Seed (1966), and, in relation to the welfare state by Titmuss (in Schottland, 1967).

Boulding is particularly concerned with symbolic images of ‘other nations’ posing a threat to the security of one’s own nation as part of the process by which ideal national images of society based on ‘freedom’, ‘justice’, or whatever, are sustained. We can use this kind of analysis to understand the role of philanthropy. For at least three centuries philanthropy suggested symbolic images which both sustained current value images (varying from decade to decade) and hid uncomfortable realities which, if exposed, would threaten established national institutions in general. For example, philanthropy as the display of wealth could help to sustain images of a prosperous and free nation; and prosperity and freedom to which the total population could subscribe, could serve to hide uncomfortable realities about the unequal distribution of wealth and power within the nation.

It is interesting to note the titles of well-known charitable enterprises because they conveyed some of these images. ‘The Society for the Reformation of Manners’ must have helped to sustain an eighteenth-century ideal image of a well-mannered, reasonable and, above all, a well-ordered English society. (It could, perhaps, be argued that the Society for the Reformation of Manners was not typical of charitable organisations. ‘The Societies purposed to raise the tone of public morals by directing against offenders [turned in by Society informers armed with sheaves of warrants] the force of the criminal law’ (Owen, 1:965). The significant point, however, as Owen points out, is that ‘the foremost philanthropists of the age were warm supporters of the Crusade.’)

The political significance of philanthropy and charity was that they over-simplified social problems and social conflict, and served as a brake against too rapid political change. How comforting if everybody could believe that the complex problems of the agrarian revolution and of the early stages of the industrial revolution could be simplified down to the reformation of morals, as represented by ‘manners’! The charity and philanthropic scene was like a stage for acting out comforting and comfortable answers to complex social problems in villages, country estates, small towns and growing cities as well as nationally.

This is not to deny the importance of individual actors whose ideas for reform were sometimes well ahead of the accepted ideas of their contemporaries—such as, for example, John Bellers whose ideas in the late seventeenth century anticipated many features of twentieth-century social provision; Mary Wolstoncroft in the eighteenth who stood for equal rights for women; or Robert Owen in the nineteenth century. But their parts did not alter the social significance of the play as a whole. Philanthropy served to display wealth, and charity over-simplified social need and social conflict. The play expressed social problems in individual, interpersonal, and often, symbolic terms. Sometimes the actors exposed fresh social needs but these, too, became simplified in the sense that they were seen in terms of a personal charitable transaction between the philanthropist, or his agent, and the recipient.

We can now apply this idea more specifically to charity in the nineteenth-century situation which gave rise to the development of social work as a movement.

The nineteenth century

Philanthropy in the nineteenth century was on a scale greater than ever before. So, too, were the total population, the size of cities, the rapidity of social change, the scale of economic exploitation and the gap between the richest and the poorest citizens. To give just one example, David Owen gives an account of the activities of Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) who, at the age of twenty-three inherited an unearned income (not capital) of £80,000 a year. The total weekly earnings of a working-class family at that time were in the region of £1 to £1.50. She gave large amounts of money away, including £50,000 at one time. The charitable objects in which she was particularly interested ranged from child welfare and education to housing betterment schemes, fallen women, colonial bishoprics and the Irish potato famine (Owen, 1965).

The ideal national narcissistic images of the nineteenth century were of progress, expansion and wealth. The political system survived in spite of intermittent fears of a revolution. After the Napoleonic wars there was no longer an external threat. The Empire grew. Britain was the workshop of the world. All this was expressed in the Great Exhibition of 1851. The ideal images were sustained partly by philanthropic activity but also by a social philosophy based on the idea of a Tree market economy’ (which, of course, never completely existed) in which Man’s ‘self-love’ was God’s ‘providence’. Wages and prices were supposed to adjust naturally to the mutual benefit of employer and labourer, of producer and consumer. Automatic mechanisms were supposed to control the creation of money and free trade was supposed to ensure ever greater and ever wider prosperity (Polanyi, 1957).

In relation to this philosophy, philanthropy was seen as both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that it showed what wealth there was to spare and, in general, it expressed images of hope. On the other hand, philanthropy was a curse in that it interfered with the ideal operation of the free labour market. By scrounging from many charities and living off the philanthropy of the rich, the labourer could escape the natural operation of the free market. Philanthropy, unless strictly controlled, was often seen, indeed, as the cause of the social ill it sought to remedy.

This was not entirely a new idea. Indiscriminate giving had often been seen as inconsistent with the principle of self-help which, it was recognised, should be encouraged. However, what had previously been an ethical question of personal responsibility was turned, in the nineteenth century, into an economic argument. If people did not learn to help themselves it was supposed that the economic order to society would be upset and this, in turn, among other things, would lead to an increase in poverty. Thus it was thought that philanthropy could actually increase poverty. It was seen to be both morally and economically degrading. The exceptional poor, who might be ‘deserving’, could legitimately be helped when the possibilities of selfhelp within the family or local community had been exhausted, but the ‘undeserving’ poor, the pauper, should be economically deterred.

Charity in the nineteenth century developed either within the context of these ideas or as a challenge to them from those, like Robert Owen, who believed that society was at fault and that the social system and its philosophy were wrong.

By the end of the nineteenth century, philanthropy was losing its credibility as a major social institution for remedying social distress. The effectiveness and the relevance of the traditional charitable transaction were being questioned. So, too, were the national images of progress and prosperity which philanthropy had helped to sustain. Despite the unparalleled accumulation of wealth, seemingly miraculous scientific advances, the accomplishment of successful geographical exploration, and improved means of communication, social advance had not kept pace. The benefits of progress were unevenly shared. These sentiments were expressed in the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission in 1909 (quoted in Rose, 1971):

‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is a popular and patriotic lyric sung each year by thousands of voices. The enthusiasm is partly evoked by the beauty of the idea itself, but more by the belief that Great Britain does, above all other countries, merit this eulogium … To certain classes of the community into whose moral and material condition it has been our duty to explore, these words are a mockery and a falsehood … No country, however rich, can permanently hold its own in the race of international competition, if hampered by an increasing load of this dead weight; or can successfully perform the role of sovereignty beyond the seas, if a portion of its own folk at home are sinking below the civilisation and aspirations of its subject races abroad …

Great Britain is the home of voluntary effort, and its triumphs and successes constitute in themselves much of the history of the country. But voluntary effort when attacking a common and ubiquitous evil must be disciplined and led. We have here to learn a lesson …

Social work came into being closely related to a need to repair the national image of greatness which had been spoilt through the dramatic exposure of social need at the end of the nineteenth century, and where charity and philanthropy had failed. We will be examining this in more detail in chapter 3. Before we do this, however, in chapter 2 we will consider the particular forms of social action in the nineteenth century upon which social work practice was built.

2

Disciplined social action in the nineteeth century

Frederick Engels’s famous book, The Condition of the Working Classes in England, provides an analysis as well as a vivid description of some of the worst, but nevertheless widespread, social conditions in Britain in 1844. Today available as a paperback (Hobsbawm, 1969), it was originally available only in German, and was not published in Britain until 1892. In the 1890s there developed an interest in understanding the causes of social problems and in facing up to the extent of social degradation in a supposedly prosperous society. At this time of mounting interest in social enquiry, the term social work came into being and signified participation in a social movement pledged to what was called social advance.

Barry McLaughlin, Herbert Blumer, Wendell King and others, in Studies in Social Movements (McLaughlin, 1969), provide some useful conceptual frameworks for considering social movements. Blumer defines social movements as ‘collective enterprises to establish a new order of life’, and King as ‘a group venture extending beyond a local community or a single event and involving a systematic effort to inaugurate changes in thought, behaviour and social relationships’. Blumer distinguishes between general social movements and specific movements, and between revolutionary movements and reform movements. His statement about a reform movement particularly applies to social work. A reform movement derives support from the prevailing code of ethics and ‘re-affirms the ideal values of a society’. When the term ‘social work’ was first used, it related to a conscious effort to re-affirm the ideal values of late Victorian and Edwardian society. Yet, fifty years previously, when the Condition of the Working Classes was first written, and when their condition was very much worse than in 1892, many people who were better off used traditional philanthropy as a way of avoiding the reality. Social statistics existed in the first half of the nineteenth century to an extent which could have made possible a greater awareness of social distress at that time. The first census was held in 1801. The first English statistical societies were formed in the 1830s (Kirkman-Gray, 1908). Rather than examine social statistics it was easier to glory in the tradition of philanthropy itself. As David Owen (1963) says, speaking of the mid-century:

For most Englishmen the hundreds of charitable institutions represented one of the glories of the British tradition and stood as a monument to the superiority of voluntary action over State intervention. They were warmed by an instinctive glow of pride as they contemplated the magnitude of British resources dedicated to the improvement of British life.

The part played by philanthropists in Victorian society was, however, complex (Harrison, 1966). Sometimes philanthropists were associated with political reform movements, such as the long struggle for the control of factory hours, the movement for a state system of elementary education, or the extension of the franchise. Others were more concerned with social action than with political action and it is from among these people, the work they did and the principles they held, that influences leading to the particular characteristics of social work can be traced. In this chapter we will consider these influences, based on particular and very different forms of disciplined social action, under three headings: first, social action within a developing system of social administration; second, the charity organisation movement; and third, forms of social action, less easy to define because of the diversity of context, but nevertheless identifiable in terms of principles of action, which we will call direct social action.

Social action within a developing system of social administration

According to one interpretation of the tenets of a laissez faire philosophy, it was an anomaly to have any system of positive social administration at all. For this reason, The Times, for example, was opposed to the beginnings of a more centralised Poor Law in 1834 (Rose, 1971):

This Poor Law system is an invention only … No seed or sprig of it is to be found in the records of our ancient history … In one word, it is AGAINST the deep-rooted and long-formed habits of this nation, the principle of all which is that the people should be made to govern themselves as much as possible, at least in their domestic concerns and relations.

On similar grounds, a little later, The Times opposed state intervention in the field of public health. Nevertheless professional administration entered these fields. In the Poor Law Administration it attempted to systematise and control relief, which, before 1834, had got out of hand when lay parish guardians had tried to curb social unrest by subsidising very low wages and paying out what amounted ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• General editor’s introduction
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Social Conflict and the Origins of Social Work
• Part II : Family Casework and the Welfare State Bureaucracy
• Part III: Social Work, Social Conflict and Bureaucracy
• Further reading
• Bibliography