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TYLERI TALES: THE BLAINA RIOTS: Part 2 - by Martyn Thomas

In the inter-war period, as today, assistance to the jobless was divided into two separate provinces  -  contributory and non-contributory benefits. Those workers who had lost their jobs recently and who had paid insurance contributions whilst in work received unemployment benefit, much as happens today. This was to hold true throughout the era.

 

For those who were not covered by the insurance scheme, or had received their full entitlement to unemployment insurance benefit over an extended period of unemployment, there was no single system of providing assistance. Instead, a variety of methods were tried over the period to help these non-insured workers including 'uncovenanted benefit', 'transitional benefit' and, as a very last resort, the Poor Law.

 

During the first few years of the 1929 Labour government severe economic problems began to be encountered. The Unemployment Insurance Fund, from which benefit to insured workers was paid, was intended to be self-supporting through the contribution system. Because of the level of unemployment prevailing at the time, however, the fund had fallen deeply into debt.

 

The May Committee, which had been established to consider the whole area of public expenditure, recommended in its July 1931 report that swingeing cuts should be made in unemployment benefit in order to rectify this problem. It was the argument that this engendered within the Labour government that led to Ramsay MacDonald leaving to become Prime Minister of the National government, taking many prominent MPs with him.

 

One of the first actions of this new government was to introduce a 10 percent cut in benefit to insured workers. "Unemployment benefit is not a living wage," declared MacDonald on 25th August 1931, "It was never intended to be that."[2] This substantial reduction apart, the system of payment to insured workers was left unaltered.

 

At the same time, however, arrangements were made to allow the Means Test to be introduced in November 1931. The Means Test was to be administered by local Public Assistance Committees (PACs) which had been established in 1920 to take over many of the functions of the Poor Law. Under the new regulations, when a person had been in receipt of statutory unemployment benefit for 26 weeks, it was deemed that their contributions had been exhausted and they were transferred to non­-contributory ‘transitional payments’.

 

The PACs had a great deal of discretion in setting these rates of payment, although they were not allowed to exceed the levels of benefit being paid to insured workers. In practice, many PACs set their scales below those paid under the insurance scheme, in some cases substantially below. As the name suggests, these means-tested payments were calculated by the individual PAC by taking into account all income, savings and possessions of the whole family to which the claimant belonged. The intrusion into the personal affairs of the unemployed and their families that this entailed led to a great feeling of bitterness towards the legislation which has never been forgotten. The Means Test, like the workhouse before it, was destined to leave an indelible mark on popular culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Unemployment Act was in three parts, Part I being the unemployment insurance act proper which dealt with all claimants on contributory benefit. This, of course, was restored to its 1931 level. Part III of the act set up an Unemployment Insurance Statutory Commission which was to oversee the operation of the act and recommend changes on an annual basis. But it was Part II which created the greatest storm and which led to a massive roar of dissent from the working class communities.

 

The government had been concerned for some time that whilst they had been able to control the level of expenditure on unemployment insurance benefit because it was decided nationally, spending on transitional payments was very much in the laps of the local PACs. Whilst many committees operated the Means Test very harshly and consequently ran very low budgets, some such as Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales more or less refused to operate it at all.

 

This did not mean that the jobless in these areas were not suffering badly, but it did at least mean that in the case of Merthyr, for instance, 98 percent of claimants were at least receiving the maximum payment allowed in law. [3] In order to gain some control over the level of this spending the government announced in Part II of the 1934 Act that the functions of the PACs would be replaced by an Unemployment Assistance Board. This body would control means-tested benefits nationally and would thus remove the local discretion which was of such concern. At the same time, since the UAB was to be an 'independent' body, it undermined the popular control which had been a feature, to a certain extent, of the PACs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The unemployed maintained their pressure on the government right up to and beyond 7th January 1935, which was the date set for the implementation of Part II. But it was not until the new UAB rates of benefit were announced in December 1934, four weeks before the date of implementation, that they were joined in earnest by the rest of the labour movement. Even then there was still only muted dissent since the new scales showed cuts in adult rates being seemingly compensated for by increases in the rates for children.

 

The following table indicates the extent of the changes: [4]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the apparently compensatory nature of the changes, when reports began to filter back to parliament from the depressed areas of the actual effects of the Act, there was uproar on even the Tory (or National Tory) benches. Robert Boothby, Conservative MP for Peterhead called the effects "brutal" and government supporter Kenneth Lindsay MP of Kilmarnock reported that 80 percent of his unemployed constituents had had their benefit cut. [5]

 

Writing in the 'South Wales Gazette', the Abertillery MP George Daggar ridiculed the anomalies which arose. A family of four unemployed sons would lose 34 shillings per week, he claimed, whilst a family with four children aged between 4-11 years old would gain 6s 6d per week. [6]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The type and scope of activity undertaken locally in opposition to the Means Test and the UAB, and the organisations central to the campaign will be examined in Chapter Three, in an attempt to set the scene for the incident itself.

 

>> Click here for Chapter 3

 

 

REFERENCES

CHAPTER TWO

1.        ‘Militant’, 27th January 1984

2.        N.Branson and M.Heinemann, ‘Britain In The Nineteen Thirties’ (1971), p.21

3.        Ibid, p.27

4.        Wal Hannington, ‘Unemployed Struggles 1919-1936’ (1936), p.304

5.        N.Branson and M.Heinemann, ‘Britain In The Nineteen Thirties’ (1971), p.35

6.        E.B.McLeod, ‘The Social And Economic Conditions Leading To The Blaina And Abertillery Riots Of 1935’ (No Date), p.43

2.            THE MEANS TEST

 

The 1930s was a period dominated by orthodox economic thinking which ruled out state intervention to solve, or even diminish, the problem of unemployment. This philosophy permeated  not only Tory and Liberal thinking, but the Labour Party also.

 

Thus when Philip Snowden was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1924 Labour government, he told parliament that, "You are never going to settle the unemployment problem. You are never going to mitigate it to any extent by making work."[1]

 

When the party was again returned to office in 1929 the thinking had not changed significantly, as later events were to prove. Even the split in Labour's ranks, which led to the formation of the National government in 1931, was not, contrary to popular belief, caused by an argument over whether to cut unemployment benefit, but over the size of the reduction needed.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=88 80

Anti-Means Test Postcard early 1930s: click image for link

By 1934, however, unemployment was beginning to fall in Britain as a whole, even though in the Distressed Areas the levels remained high. So aggressive - and successful - was the National government's attack on the living standards of the jobless that the Unemployment Insurance Fund was actually beginning to show a surplus. The pressure for a restoration of the 1931 cuts was thus increased.

 

Eventually, after a great deal of activity on the part of the working class, including the February 1934 Hunger March, it was announced in April 1934 that unemployment insurance benefit would be restored to its previous level in July of the same year. This was the date set for the introduction of the new Unemployment Act.

 

But although the restoration of benefit to insured workers to its pre-1931 level was a welcome victory for the unemployed activists, the Act also contained a sting in the tail for those in receipt of means-tested transitional payments.

In the 1930s, Lady Clough Anson ran a canteen for unemployed workers at Waterloo Road in London

Picture - ©National Archives Click image for link

A critique of the Means Test by the Scottish Socialist Party published in the early 1930s (source - Strathclyde University)
- click image for link

The loss of income suffered by many unemployed families forced the older sons and daughters out of the parental home, as it was their proportion of the family benefit which attracted the greatest reductions. This did nothing to lessen the feeling of bitterness towards the National government, which was accused of destroying family life.

 

But whilst parliament played its part in drumming up opposition to the Act, it was rank and file pressure which played by far the most important role in the fight against the legislation. Suddenly, militant activity which had been undertaken by sections of the working class throughout the 1920s and 1930s, through hunger marches, occupations, and so on, underwent a quantum leap upwards to a new level of participation and directness by working class organisations.

1930s means test