How far do you agree that the Boer War acted

as a spur to much needed

reform in Britain?

Is your country efficient?

Является ли Ваша страна эффективное?

Ist Ihr Land leistungsfähig?

List the factors you would measure to make a judgement

What is your judgement?

What is ‘laissez-faire’ (ism)?

What is ‘laissez-faire’ (ism)?

People are responsible for themselves, so government should not interfere in

prices, wages or social problems

Read Source DPage 92 (Ed)

Define National Efficiency?

What is Social Darwinism?

National Efficiency

Growing sense of pessimism in the 1890s

Competitiveness of British industry

Quality of the education system

Health of the people

Spark Physical deterioration – rejection of recruits

33% 1899, 29% 1900, 28% 1901)

The Condition of the Nation

National Inequality Inequalities of wealth

Land ownership – 25% of land owned by 1000 people

Wealth distribution 10% of population owned 92% wealth 90% below income tax threshold 0f £160 pa

Gaps in Living Standards

BUT

The Condition of the Nation

Average real wages rose by 30%

Better diets

Better health

More leisure time

BUT

The Condition of the Nation

30% of population in abject poverty Unemployment, old age and sickness

Infant mortality 150/1000 – poor died young

Differences in height Social class and race

Urbanisation Social decay

Differential fertility Race suicide – fertile but unfit produce 50% of population

Social Darwinism

What was the National Efficiency movement?

Informal network of friends and acquaintances

Dining Club – ‘The Co-Efficients’

‘permeate the state and re-shape its policy agenda’

The Co-Efficients

The club's membership included:[2]

Leopold Stennett Amery, statesman and Conservative politician. Richard Burdon Haldane, Liberal politician, lawyer, and philosopher. Halford John Mackinder, geographer and politician. Leopold Maxse, editor, National Review Alfred Milner, statesman and colonial administrator Henry Newbolt, author and poet. Carlyon Bellairs, naval commander and M.P. James Louis Garvin, journalist and editor William Pember Reeves, New Zealand statesman, historian and poet Bertrand Russell, philosopher, and mathematician Sir Clinton Edward Dawkins, businessman and civil servant. Sir Henry Birchenough, businessman and civil servant. Sir Edward Grey, Liberal politician H. G. Wells, novelist

What did the National Efficiency movement want?

The Empire to be more efficient

Technocratic approach to leading the country

Meritocracy

Modernisation

Education Children in education longer – Science and Technology

What did the National Efficiency movement want?

What does this source say about the call for national efficiency?

There is a universal outcry for efficiency in all departments of society, in all aspects of life. We hear

the outcry on all hands and from the most unexpected of persons. From the pulpit, the newspaper, the

hustings, in the drawing room, the street, the same cry is heard: Give us efficiency or we die.

Quoted in G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency, published by Blackwells 1971

What did the National Efficiency movement want?

Battle between the forces of competence and incompetence NOT between capitalism and

socialismSocialists

Rapid and far-reaching political reform

Liberals Moderate and gradual reform

Conservatives Maintain existing arrangements

What did the National Efficiency movement achieve?

Directly – not much!

1904 – Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration

Indirectly

Contributed to the Liberal reforms of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith

NEW LIBERALISM

State should take a more active role in: Defeating poverty and social evils Would then achieve individual liberty

Boosted by ‘National Efficiency’ debateNew Liberals generally opponents of the Boer War

J A Hobson and David Lloyd-George

Boer War strengthened argument that state should be at centre of social improvements

Countered ‘laissez-faire (ism)’ of 19th centuryBoer War - significant step toward the foundation

of the Welfare State

Liberal ReformsThe road to the welfare state

1907 – Mother and Infants clinics 1907 – Education Act

school medical inspections and school clinics 1908 – Mines Act

Maximum 8-hour working day 1908 – Children’s’Act

Clean verminous children and place children in safe custody 1908 – Old Age Pensions 1909 – National network of Labour Exchanges 1910 – Housing and Town Planning Act

Slum clearance and council houses 1911 – National Insurance Scheme

Liberal ReformsOther influences

Trades Unions Political force that would improve working conditions

Labour Party Newly formed representatives of working class men

Social Surveys Booth and Rowntree

Germany Bismark social reforms

Army Reforms

Boer War stimulus to 2 important set of reforms

1902 Lord Salisbury asked Lord Elgin to establish a Royal Commission Changes in the organisation of the army Abolition of the post of C-in-C

Lord Esher asked to make detailed recommendations Improve organisation of the War Office

Esher Report 1904

Radical reform of the High Command Creation of an Army Council and reorganisation of the War

Office Analyse issues, decide policy, end confusion, Increase parliamentary control over army

Abolition of C-in-C Creation of General Staff

Prepare army for war Creation of CGS (Chief of the General Staff)

Responsibility for planning and training Adjutant General responsible for welfare and recruiting Quartermaster-General responsible for supplies Master General of Ordnance for armaments and fortification

Reorganisation of the War Office

Esher Report 1904

Changes for the ordinary soldier Khaki became peace-time dress New weapons

Lee Enfield rifle Quick-firing field guns

Old drill books replaced in 1904-05 New professionalism in training under Haig New military base on the Salisbury Plain Staff College at Camberley Reserve force discussion

The Haldane Reforms 1907

Liberal MP and minister

Secretary of State for War 1905-12

One of the great military reformers

Brilliant lawyer and amateur philosopher

Chose Haig to modernise the army

The Haldane Reforms

The National Army will, in the future, consist of a Field Force and a Territorial or Home Force. The Field Force is to be completely reorganised and is to be ready in

all respects for mobilisation immediately on the outbreak of a great war. In that event the Territorial or

home force would be mobilised too, but mobilised with a view to its undertaking in the first instance,

systematic training for war.

An extract from a memorandum of R B Haldane on proposed military reform, published February 1907

The Haldane Reforms 1907

Restricted to £28m – dictated size of armyTwo-line Army

BEF (British Expeditionary Force) Permanent battle-ready force 150,000 men

Territorials Created from Militia, Volunteer Reserve and Yeomanry Organised into Field Divisions complete with transport and

artillery Based on Cardwell’s systems of local regiments 1910 – 276, 618 in TA

The Boer War, National Efficiency and Imperialism

A nation may either, following the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put brains into agriculture, develop a finely

varied system of public education, general and technical, apply the ripest science to its special manufacturing industries…..or it may, like Great Britain, neglect its

agriculture, allowing its lands to go out of cultivation and its population to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in

its method of education and in the capacity of adapting to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order that it may

squander its pecuniary and military resources in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields of investment in

distant corners of the earth, adding millions of square miles and of unassimilable population to the area of the Empire

J A Hobson, Imperialism, published by J Nisbet 1902