Agricultural trade unionism and the crusade against outdoor relief: poor law politics in the Brix orth

This article examines the impact of the crusade against outdoor relief in the Brixworth Union (Nol'thamptonshire), which was one of the most fervent supporters of central government's poor law retreilchment campaign in the late-Victorian era. The paper examines the relationship between the origins of the crusade against out-relief and the advent of agricultural trade unionism. It argues that guardians of the poor in the Brixworth Union anticipated central government's new anti-out-relief guidelines because they wanted to make a pre-emptive strike against trade union combination in 1871-2. This set the stage for a very protracted and bitter contest that was not resolved until the poor law was democratized in the mid-~89os. In the nineteenth century one of the key welfare debates within government was whether guardians of the poor ought to grant outdoor relief allowances to claimants such as the able-bodied unemployed, disabled, elderly and sick, rather than compelling them to be adlnitted as paupers into the workhouse•' The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 stipulated that guardians • I am indebted to Peter Bartrip and Peter King of University College Northampton, my doctoral supervisors, for their COlnments aim suggestions regarding this article. I am also grateful to Emily Elsie Hurren (19o9-1995) and Charlotte May Poole (19o4-1989) who first shared the radical history of their native county, Northamptonshire, wifl~ me in 1988. ' Although there is an extensive poor law historiography that discusses mid-Victorian out-relief debates, few welfare textbooks analyse the crusade against out-relief after 187o. The tbllowing selection of texts examine aspects of the crusade controversy: Derek Fraser, The evohrlion oJ" dw British we(lhre stme (1973); Kard Williams, From pauperism to poverty (1981); Michael E. Rose, 'The crisis of poor relief in England, 186o-I9oo', in W. J. Mommsen and W. Mock (eds), The Emergence of the Wdfare State in Britain amt Germmo,, h'(~o-195o (1981), pp. 5o-7o; Anne Digby, 'The rural poor', in G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Victoria, Comm),side (2 w~ls, 198~), I1, pp. 591-6m; Anne l)igby, The poor law in nineteenth-cemur), Enghmd amt Wales (1982); David Tlmmson, 'Workhouse to nursing laome; residential care of elderly people in England since 184o', Ageing and Society 3 (1983), pp. 43-69; David Thomson, 'I am not my father's keeper; families and the elderly in nineteenth-century England', Lan, arid History Review 2 (t984), pp. 265-86; David Thomson, 'The decline of social security. Falling state support for the elderly since early Victorian times,' Ageing and SocieO, 4 (1984), pp. 299-336; Michael E. Rose, The relief of povert), (1986); David Thomson, 'Wellhre and the historians', in L. Bonfield, R. M. Smith and K. Wrigt:tson (eds), The world n,e have gained (1986), pp. 355-78; Mary Mackinnon, 'English poor law policy and the crusade against out-relief', ]EcHist 47 (1987), pp. 603-25; Christine Bellamy, Administering cemral-local relations, 1871-018 (1988); David Tholnson, 'The weltilre of the elderly in the past, a family or COlnmunity responsibility?', in M. Pelling and R. Smith (eds), L(fe, death amt the elderly, historical perspectives (1991), pp. 194-222; Felix Driver, Power and Pauperism. The workhouse s),stem, 1834-1884 (1993); G. Finlayson, Citizen, state and social welfilre in Britain, 183o-199o (1994); Robert Hulnphreys, Sin, organized chari O, and the poor law in Victorian England (1995); David Englander, Poverty and the poor law in nineteenth-century Britain, ~834-1914. From Chadwick to Booth (1998); Alan Kidd, State, society and the poor in nineteenth-ceatttr), Enghmd (1999). AgHR 48, If, pp. 200-222 2 0 0 ii A G R I C U L T U R A L T R A D E U N I O N I S M 201 ought to apply the workhouse test to each poor relief applicant to ensure that the rates were being spent on the relief of destitution, rather than poverty. Guardians were advised to compel each destitute pauper to accept indoor relief care for the duration of their claim for welfare assistance and to refuse out-relief funding, particularly if the applicant was categorized as 'able-bodied'. Benthamite reformers, who framed the New Poor Law, argued that by utilising the workhouse test guardians would ensure that poor relief was each claimant's 'less eligible' option, which would deter undeserving applicants fi'om applying for parish funding, thereby discouraging them from becoming welfare dependants. They believed that these new antiout-relief regulations would promote an ethos of self-help, introduce more uniform administrative practices and reduce the national cost of poor relief expenditure. In reality, as numerous regional studies have shown, the 1834 statute contained a number of procedural loopholes that gave guardians considerable discretionary powers to continue to grant out-relief allowances. Guardians were able to administer poor relief according to local economic conditions. As an example, Anne Digby's studies of East Anglia have shown that in many rural areas, out-relief was a useful wage supplement which arable farmers, who served as guardians of the poor, used to lnaintain their labour supplies over the winter season when work was scarce. 2 Medical out relief (allowances granted on medical advice which included supplements of 2s. 6d. and medical extras in kind such as bread) could potentially form an important part of the income of the non-institutionalized poor. In addition, most guardians, both rural and urban, preferred to spend the poor rates on out-relief provision because it was cheaper then the costs of housing pauper families in the workhouse. Consequently, 'variety rather than uniformity characterized out-relief administration' throughout the mid-Victorian period. 3 In 1863-4 debates collcerning out-relief funding were revived after the national cost of poor relief expenditure increased by around 2o per cent during a series of trade slumps and industrial crises, most notably in Lancashire and London. ~ Many poor law unions did not have the workhouse capacity to provide unlimited indoor relief provision during the economic downturn and they were forced to pay out-relief allowances more liberally. Guardians feared if they did not reintroduce out-relief funding but turned away poor relief claimants who they could not admit into the workhouse, their inaction would result in social unrest (which in fact did break ou t in the East End of London in 1867-9). However, this trend alarmed senior civil servants and at their instigation, central government passed the Union Chargeability Act of 1865, which Compelled individual parishes to pool their rates into a centralized pauperism fund in each poor law union to fund the expansion of workhouse facilities. -~ In the following decade, central government commissioned three reports by senior civil servants, which re-examined the contentious issue of out-relief management. They culminated in a set of radical recommendations, which advocated that guardians should withdraw all out-relief funding and only implement the workhouse test. Each of the three reports represented a formative stage in what became known as the crusade against out-relief. After the Poor Law Board was merged into the newly created Local Government Board in 2 A. Digby, The Pool" Law in nineteenth-centtuy England and Wales 0982), pp. 19-26. 3 David Roberts, Victorian origins of the welfare state (196o), p. 1o9; Williams, From pauperism 1o poverO,, p. lo7. '~ Rose, 'Crisis of pool" relief', pp. 50-70.