100 Years on the Broo

For some people being unemployed can become a state of being. Finding employment becomes increasingly difficult the longer one has been forced to live on welfare payments. Scotland has a sad history of high unemployment and life on the broo is all to real for many families throughout the land.

Life on Unemployment Benefit

David Cameron “The benefits system has created a benefit culture. It doesn’t just allow people to behave irresponsibly, but often actively encourages them to do so.”

Tony Blair “The welfare that works, is the welfare that helps people to help themselves.”

Margaret Thatcher: “What our people seem to have lost is belief in the balance between production and welfare.”

Love it or loathe it, life on the Broo has been part of our culture for 100 years. Just about everyone in Scotland has either lived it or knows someone who has. But, how did we get here? And what happened before life on the Broo?

Life at the beginning of the 20th century was brutish and short. A boy born in 1900 could expect to live until he was just 45. A girl until she was 49. The average worker earned £1.40 for a 60 hour week. But if life was tough for those with a job, for those without it was dreadful.

Professor Paul Spicker: “You would have had to become a pauper, you would have had to lose your civil rights, you would have had to go into the workhouse. If you or any of your family had to go the workhouse, the family would be pauperised, it would mean they would lose everything.”

Workhouses have been around since the 17th century. They prevented total destitution, but only just.

Professor Richard Finlay: “In one room they would sew mail bags, in the next, they would unpick them and then start over. It was exceptionally demeaning and cruel. People dreaded going into the poorhouse.”

By the beginning of the 20th century there was the growing acceptance that unemployment was rarely the fault of the unemployed. Illness and closures were far more common causes. At the same time, the working class vote was becoming increasingly important.

The Welfare System

So, in 1911, the liberal chancellor Lloyd George introduced the National Insurance Act. Life on the Broo was born.

Dr Sharon Wright: “Lloyd George’s idea was to address the problem of poverty, he wanted to deal with mass poverty that was too proud to wear the badge of pauperism. So, he introduced insurance , a scheme that workers would pay into, the state would pay into and employers would pay into.”

Initially, it was only available to workers in certain jobs. those that, by their nature, were sporadic like shipbuilding. Even so, the Liberals had introduced a safety net for the working classes and stolen the lead on their Labour Party rivals.

Bob Holman: “It came into being but Keir Hardie and the Labour movement were immediately critical of it because it only covered a minority of workers and it only covered them for about 15 weeks.”

The Liberals were so pleased with Lloyd George’s reforms they commissioned a film showing people free from the tyranny of the workhouse. In reality, it remained as the place of last resort until the 1940s.

But, any concerns about life on the broo would soon be overshadowed. There had never been a war like it, killing on an industrial scale, millions dead, no family was left untouched. On the home front, women entered the workplace en masse, frequently undertaking jobs previously reserved for men, For those lucky enough to return from the war, there was little else to cheer. The economy was struggling. With Russia having fallen to the Bolsheviks, goverments feared idle and hungry workers. Benefits were extended tp cover most jobs. Life on the Broo was a useful tool.

The first march for jobs set off to London from Glasgow in 1922 and protesters carried on marching from all over Britain for a decade. For many though, life on the Broo was the only option. By 1932 a staggering 1 in every 5 of the working population was claiming unemployment benefit. A record that has remained unbroken to this day.

In 1934 the Unemployment Assistance Act acknowledged the changing times. Now, the long-term unemployed and those who’d never even had a job would be entitle to a life on the Broo. But, it came at a price, it involved stringent means testing. Increasingly, it was becoming clear that Industry alone could never create the jobs needed and governments would have to offer their workers more than just a life on the Broo.

Work had stopped on The Queen Mary in 1931. The liner stood rusting on The Clyde for over 2 years, a symbol of Britain’s economic woes. Now the government put up money to finish the job.

In rural Scotland, the hydro scheme promised communities both jobs and electricity and in 1937 work began on Scotland’s first industrial estate at Hillingdon.

In 1938, as the decade drew to a close, Scotland hosted the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park A spectacular celebration of industrial endeavour. It was a tremendous success attracting more than 12 million visitors. Then just 9 months after it was all over the Second World War broke out.

37 years after its inception, thanks to the Beveridge report, a war-weary nation could now look forward to social security from cradle to grave. Beveridge’s scheme was not without flaws. It soon became apparent there needed to be something for people who were unable to contribute. So National Assistance was introduced and in the post-war years as the economy began to boom other anomalies of a contribution based system emerged. It was clear there was very little support for the disabled.

In 1971, as part of the concerns we have the introduction of invalidity benefit which is an extension of the existing national insurance sickness benefit for long term claimants.

The benefits system was proliferating at a time when the old industries were faltering. They were increasingly dependant on subsidy and crippled by industrial unrest . The 1970s became a decade synonymous with strikes, 3 day weeks and black-outs. That was all set to change when The Conservatives swept to power in 1979. Because of population growth, unemployment was higher, in sheer numbers, than it had been in the 1930s By 1986 3 million people were unemployed, just over 10% of the working age population.

Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to continue subsidising old unprofitable industries meant many went to the wall. For those bemoaning the lack of work and opportunity, there was little sympathy. Whole communities that had depended on mines, car plants and steel works suddenly found themselves devastated by closures.

JobCentres struggled to cope. New ideas such as job clubs and youth training schemes were launched in an attempt to try and get people off benefits and back into work. The YTS was particularly unpopular, seen as nothing more than cheap labour. For those who couldn’t find work, life on the Broo was tough.

In 1978 there were 800,000 men and women of working age on sickness benefit, by 1992 that figure had risen to 2.2 million. These people were living on benefit without registering as unemployed.

Labour came to power in 1997 pledging to overhaul the benefits system. Job Centres became open-plan , in the parlance of the day; more inclusive. There was Job Seekers Allowance, a new deal to help people back into the workplace. Then in 2008; the credit crunch. Suddenly the middle-aged, the middle-class and middle-management were losing their jobs.

As the credit crunch continued, ever increasing numbers were claiming unemployment benefits. Perhaps, surprisingly that was also helping to keep a shaky economy remain stable.

External Links

The Broo - Wikipedia Page