Attlee's Vision on Social Work in the 1920s

1. Clement Attlee Social Worker:Attlee’s views about social work as outlined in his 1920 book The Social Worker 21 September 2016, Social Work History Network

2. The Social Worker • Attlee was asked to edit four volumes by Bell...only one emerged. • Part of content taken from his LSE lectures. • History, explanation, analysis and his own ‘pitch’, which is clearly socialist – his social work and socialism ‘blending’ over the years between 1905 and 1921.

3. Social Service and Citizenship Putney, where the Attlees lived and did good works • Attlee’s ‘social work is a responsibility of us all’. ‘an attitude of mind’, ‘citizenship is a duty to the world’ • The boldness of CA’s idea of ‘citizenship’ has three purposes. • Reflects the excitement of the times. Franchise extention had made citizens of c 87% of adult pop (up from c 30% in 1914). and many saw this as an opportunity to extend reach and responsibilities of all. (WCA for instance). • CA says social work is no longer done ‘to’ working classes but done ‘with’ them and that social work is as much a job for working class as affluent charitable workers. So this fits in with his belief in equality of esteem as well as opportunity. • Wants to lance the reputation of the SW as dull and self sacrificing

4. Varieties of Social Work • Boys club – drill, football, boxing, draughts, summer camp • Manager Haileybury House settlement • Member Trafalgar House Care Committee – supervising 400 meals • Helped Beatrice Webb with work on Poor Law Commission and publicity for it (research on sweated labour) • Ten month stint as secretary of Toynbee Hall • Lecturer for Ruskin College (extension lectures I think) • ‘Official Explainer’ for National Insurance Act • (As ILP member cut up loaves for striking miners) • LSE lecturer (post funded by Tata) • War Service ‘Major Attlee’ • Edits The Stepney Worker • Limehouse Guardians – Chair children’s home and London Asylums Board – Mayor of Stepney

5. Social Service and Citizenship • Two types of social reformer; those like DrBarnardo (homes and emigration schemes) who see the trees and those like Robert Owen who see the wood (whole society). • The wood is assaulted by such state schemes as, NI, birth notification, OAPs, free school meals, stat midwife registration. • ‘Today we consider it possible to alter men’s environment by collective action’ • (Hey, this is socialism! And his lecture audience is affluent SW students…)

6. Charities • ‘charity is only possible without loss of dignity between equals. A right in law (like OAP) is less galling than an allowance paid by a rich man’. • Charity, CA says, is a sort of ‘imposed benevolance’ – and accepted the social and economic status quo. • ‘Modern Social Service is about social justice’ ‘ • ‘Social service means personal service’ • ‘charities in the main deal with results not causes’ (though not GFS and Mabys) • Accepts that the state cannot do as much as private person with some afflications, ‘moral defectiveness’ (drunkeness) he says that the ‘most important point is the personal influence brought to bear on the individual’. • So state infrastructure AND personal influence.

7. Organisation of Social Work • This theoretical chapter has three parts • A forensic dismantling of the ideas behind the COS and ‘cold charity’ where activity is often delegated. He credits COS with trying to order chaotic almsgiving, assessment, proper recording, funding relief fully - but dismisses its thinking, suggesting it plays a minimal role in 1920. • Guild of Help an alternative approach • Organistion of the Poor Law, its ‘less eligibility’ principle and the developments over the previous 15 years– ameliorative, even progressive, but by law ‘destitution’ is the aim. So infirmaries could not develop. ‘Universal’ services like Public Health Visitors and anything to do with Education landed with the Council. OAP, NI both separate from Guardians, Asylum committees Mental Deficiency Act all seperate from Guardians. So by 1920 Poor Law focus on destitution meant its focus was getting narrower and narrower.

8. Organisation of Social Work Responsibilities held by Poor Law Guardians Workhouse and out relief Infirmaries undertaking more. Registered Births and Deaths, Affiliation (Bastardy) Orders Relieving Officers (incl Specialists) Held by the Council Maternity Care and Blind persons School Attendance Officers and Care Committees Public Health Visitors Both funded: NSPCC, District Nursing Associations, Moral Welfare Committees, Homes for Inebriate women, Discharged Prisoner’s Aid Society, Cripples Parlours, Deaf Society, Blind Workshops... Central management, OAP, NI, MDA (with local committees)

9. Organisation of Social Work • By 1920 ‘The Local Authority has become the chief agency for social work’. • CA suggests that voluntary worker has to know how all that works or work in close harmony with LA.

10. Social Service in conjunction with LAs • While govt bodies provide the infrastructure The average municipal body is none too well off for ideas...(P 203) and officials were all ‘thumbs rather than fingers’, so while OAPs and sickness benefit and maternity clinics might be run by the state, work of a personal nature might well be left with voluntary bodies. • Education run by LAs, but in tandem with vols (Same with MDAct) • Care Committees • Club workers • Children’s Holiday funds • (maternity clinics were merging)

11. Social Service in conjunction with LAs • Paid Official must be reinforced by Voluntary Worker because • Needs local knowledge • Officials very busy • Officials tied up with red tape • Vols can seek out new methods • Mutual influence and education • State leadership is the future so the voluntary worker has little choice but to work with paid officials

12. Qualifications and Training • Urwick’s School of Social Work (1903 – 1910) merged with LSE. Attlee lectured at LSEand for Ruskin College. One aim in TSW was to banish the idea of the SW as low paid, willing always to sacrifice themselves. He said: • SWs need sympathy • Don’t start with relief but with more amenable groups like boys • Cheerfulness • Be yourself • See the whole • Don’t become the agency • Avoid holding out for the ‘best’

13. Religious Agencies • National: CETS, Salvation Army, ‘Waifs and Strays’, Girls Friendly Society Most activity was local – all churches of all denominations (Catholics less so) ‘missioned’ – offering alternative activities to young people. • [We celebrate today the power and struggles of suffragists and socialists before 1914, but by far the biggest social movements in Attlee’s time was Temperance (hundreds of Temperance Bars and Hotels, Bands of Hope/Rechabites, Billiard Halls, Probation Service, Hundreds of Sports Clubs (Queen’s Park Rangers, Fulham, Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers, others from works teams: Charlton, Orient and Arsel, Man Utd)] • Largely a historical chapter but CA mentions work of non conformist churches, Catholic Church, Salvation Army, YMCA

14. The Settlement Movement • By far the strongest in East London (28 in 1920) 25 in East London, 1 each in Tavistock Place, Battersea, Notting Hill. 16 others across the UK. • Time in a Settlement - something of a right of passage for socially conscious graduates? (like MO in 1937/38). • The most effective ones had a huge range of activities: COS branch, boys clubs, holiday schemes, education and cultural classes and became the local hub for insurance schemes, advice bureaux, creches. • ‘little can be done for if not done with the people’ Canon Barnett. Settlers Attlee says aimed to live a common life in a poor district. • Organised much like an Oxford college, private rooms/common rooms, a warden and domestic servants. • East End was dangerous in the 1880s. Settlements like ‘cantons’ of civilization in foreign territory.

15. The Settlement Movement • Attlee in 1920 felt their time had passed. • Poverty was not so desperate and the East End was safe. • He saw the ‘foreign missionary’ element – affluent people coming to teach the poor how to live - as antipathetic to socialism. - ‘there is a certain artificiality about settlement life’, ‘members of different classes now know each other [better than] before’. (His own relationship with Charlie Griffith) • Settlements in 1920 had three roles • Centre for voluntary work and meeting of minds • Training for young workers • Social laboratories for testing ideas • (and he thought settlements mixed up the classes) • Clear ideas about the approach • ‘Social Work is not the monopoly of any one class’ • ‘must be free of any taint of superiority’ • ‘Better if people with different ideas are settlers’.

16. Varieties of Social Worker • Pioneer – chooses housing as his example (most pressing social need after both world wars) • Octavia Hill, Leverhulme/Cadbury, Mrs Barnett, Ebenezer Howard • In the country – could not work this section out • Social investigator • Agitator – most interesting part. • For specific reform • Scientifically minded • Pure and simple - CA clear that SW cannot rile employer too much. • writers (Dickens, Wells..) • Businessman • Working conditions • Housing • Welfare supervisors

17. Social Work and the Working Classes • Friendly Societies • Basis on which NI Act operates with many unions and friendly societies approved as NI local agencies • Trades Unions – testing ground for running things • Co-operative movement – • practical mutual support • Co-op moved into funerals because private insurers were ripping working people off. • Working man’s clubs – mutual support • Workers and self education - WEA

18. Themes from The Social Worker • State had established a welfare infrastructure (visiting charities’ day gone). • But officials were ‘all fingers and thumbs’ so ‘social workers’ (the affluent ones he was training) would be better placed to undertake work of ‘personal influence’ • But paradoxically social work should be undertaken by all ‘citizens’. After the Great War people lived under a broader sky and society should be ordered through co-operation and mutual support… • CA seems to be talking to affluent SWs in training but attempting to move the idea on to a more inclusive notion – roles for all citizens.