This is an interesting chapter. Attlee is well aware of the changes that have improved the lives of ordinary people, but he is also well aware of how our own society – because we are part of it – tends to make us less able to see what we need to do.
This is something which C.S. Lewis also mentions, when talking about writers and their background:
“All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.”
Lewis suggests that there is our own “characteristic blindness” because we are part of our society and therefore find it hard to see it “from the outside”. And Attlee gives some pointers towards these – his society “allowed huge slum-areas” to exist.
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In Jersey, we may perhaps see this in the furore which the new regulations concerning the state of housing have met with concerted resistance on the part of landlords. The president of the Jersey Landlords Association, Robert Weston, says the law is "wholly unnecessary" and "terribly vague". The Association says that the law is being passed "without knowing what is likely to become illegal and what is likely to become a legal obligation".
So what does it involve? The JEP makes it clear in its summary:
“The minimum standards, which would be introduced by ministerial order, would consist of 29 potential hazards against which premises would be assessed on a formal scoring system. These would include damp, mould growth and unsafe staircases. Landlords would also need to ensure that smoke and carbon monoxide alarms had been fitted, and that adequate safety checks on gas and electricity services had been carried out.”
These are not vague, as the picture above shows – they are clear deficiencies, and what I didn’t notice in the landlord’s defence of the status quo was how they would police the kind of disreputable dwelling. This has been going on for decades, and like Attlee points out, it is a social evil “to which we have become accustomed, and which is rarely noticed”
The second point I’d like to note is Attlee’s discussion of economics, which he criticises as often so taken up with an “abstract concept of labour” as to forget the human beings that are the subject of economics, and their basic needs.
He is pointing towards what E.F. Schumacher would later raise in his book – “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered.”. And while Attlee sees the State as an agent of change in intervening, it is people who are important at the end of the day, which is where change must be practice, directed to specific ends, to make a better society for everyone.
To come back to the subject of rental standards, the Landlord's Association has had decades to tidy up their act and bring some kind of self-regulation to prevent slum housing in Jersey. Their failure means the State has to act as an agent of change and intervene.
Advances In Knowledge – Part 1
By Clement Attlee
Looking back on the conditions of the early part of last century and reading of the years of effort that it took to prevent small children, even under seven years of age, from being worked for fourteen or fifteen hours a day in factories and mines, we are amazed at the callousness with which such a state of affairs was regarded, and can hardly conceive how people who were, as we can see, in other affairs intelligent, reasonably humane and enlightened, should not have instantly protested.
Yet at the same time we are ourselves indifferent to numbers of evils to which we have become accustomed, and which are rarely noticed. Probably in a future time it will seem amazing to our descendants that we should have allowed huge slum-areas like East and South London, the Lancashire towns, or the mining villages, to remain for years without taking real action to abolish them. We all imagine that if we had been present in Jerusalem we should not have voted for Barabbas.
In our criticisms of the social workers of the past we are apt to forget how great has been the increase in knowledge since their day. The careful dissection and investigation of social phenomena is a comparatively modern achievement, but it has perhaps done more than any single factor to change the outlook of men and women on social problems.
Early reformers were working in the dark, grappling with evils that had come on society with great suddenness. The causes underlying social discontents had not been investigated, and even the facts were not known to more than a few.
To-day the social worker can profit by the labours of his predecessor, the ground has been explored and mapped out. Research has been made into almost every phase of poverty, and many of its causes have been elucidated.
The older type of social worker was mainly endeavouring to deal with results: he saw that people were hungry, or ill-clad, or sick, and his first impulse was to provide food, clothing and medicine. The existence of classes of the community habitually in this state was taken for granted, and the reasons why they were so were not investigated.
The result too often was that the remedy, dealing as it did with symptoms only, was as bad as the disease. In the same way, many social reformers did not sufficiently realise that the evil which appeared to them to be a cause was in itself only a result. Thus the prevalence of drunkenness would be asserted as a prime cause of poverty, without considering whether in fact drunkenness itself was not due to bad conditions of work, a degrading environment, or the general greyness of life.
During the nineteenth century a great advance was made in the science of preventive medicine. Instead of being concerned almost entirely with healing disease after it had arisen, medical science turned to the improvement of the environment, and the prevention of disease arising. Thus the recognition that a whole group of diseases were bred in the slums, and were due to a low standard of life, led to the public health agitation, and the passing of legislation promoting sanitary reform which has done far more to improve the health of the urban population than any great advances in curative methods.
By analogy from this in social matters we can see that unemployment, for instance, is a disease of an industrial society in our present stage of development, and that no amount of provision for individual men and women will take the place of the removal as far as possible of its causes. In the words of Mr. Sidney Webb it is no good hammering on the bulge, the direct method is often the ineffective one.
There are numbers of social workers who find in the work of research and investigation the best outlet for their desire for social service. Some may be chiefly engaged in investigation into the psychological effects of certain pieces of social machinery, others in the machinery itself. It is almost a distinct motive in itself, this desire to see the machinery of society running smoothly and cleanly.
Such a feeling can be seen running through the works of Mr. H. G. Wells, where he exhibits the disgust of an orderly and scientific mind at the wasteful and chaotic nature of our social arrangements. One has only to compare his Utopias with that of William Morris to see the difference between the scientific and aesthetic appeals to social service. In those of the former the emphasis is on the mechanism of society, and the possibilities of harnessing the forces of nature in order to make attainable a fine life for human beings are worked out in considerable detail and with great imagination. In Morris, on the other hand, there is little attention to the machinery of society, but a very keen realisation of the sort of life he thought best for people.
Thus the scientific motive takes its place as one of the incentives that lead men to devote themselves to social service, and the great influence of the scientific investigator on the methods of social reformers, and on the outlook of those engaged in social work, must be acknowledged.
It has been pointed out above how much the doctrines of the classical economists hampered the efforts of social reformers by practically forbidding all action by the State outside the narrowest lines.
Economics became known as the dismal science : it was thought to be opposed to the efforts of the more earnest reformers, and to render futile all the endeavours of the working classes to improve their industrial position :hence the vehement attacks on it by Ruskin and others. At one time it seemed as if economic science had got entirely out of touch with human life: it had become abstract and academic.
To the man who keenly realised the evils of the industrial system the doctrines of the classical economists seemed to offer little hope of better things. He read for instance of the fluidity of labour, and that if labour was displaced from one industry it would flow to wherever it was needed; that if new processes and increased machinery were introduced, in the long run more men would be employed; but to the man in touch with the sufferings of the unemployed this was cold comfort, for he knew that the long run was often fatal to the man with the short purse.
The economist did not seem to realise that the abstract concept of labour consisted of a number of human beings who were in fact the greater part of the nation. Political economy seemed to be inhuman, in laying stress on how commodities could be most cheaply produced, without enquiring what would be the effect on social conditions.
From this position the science has been rescued through the work of the practical social worker, the experimenter, and the investigator. The transition from the earlier to the later views of J. S. Mill marks the turning of the tide, and since that time the science has become more and more social. It has become the hopeful science.
This changed outlook has been reflected in the policy of the country in regard to social questions.
From complete freedom of contract we have moved to an ever increasing state regulation of conditions. The earlier efforts at regulation of hours of labour, wages, and conditions of work were regarded at the time as rather regrettable exceptional provisions, introduced for the protection of certain classes who were especially weak, women and children. To-day the idea of a minimum wage and a maximum working day is almost generally accepted.
In the same way during the last thirty years the work of the organised community in local affairs has steadily increased, and the question whether a certain industry should be carried on by individual enterprise or collective effort is decided more on grounds of practical convenience than general principle.
Where formerly it was considered that the State was a sort of referee who kept the ring wherein contending individualities had full scope for contest, we now have the conception that it is the duty of the State to act as the co-ordinating factor in making all individual efforts work for the good of the citizens.
This is something which C.S. Lewis also mentions, when talking about writers and their background:
“All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.”
Lewis suggests that there is our own “characteristic blindness” because we are part of our society and therefore find it hard to see it “from the outside”. And Attlee gives some pointers towards these – his society “allowed huge slum-areas” to exist.
In Jersey, we may perhaps see this in the furore which the new regulations concerning the state of housing have met with concerted resistance on the part of landlords. The president of the Jersey Landlords Association, Robert Weston, says the law is "wholly unnecessary" and "terribly vague". The Association says that the law is being passed "without knowing what is likely to become illegal and what is likely to become a legal obligation".
So what does it involve? The JEP makes it clear in its summary:
“The minimum standards, which would be introduced by ministerial order, would consist of 29 potential hazards against which premises would be assessed on a formal scoring system. These would include damp, mould growth and unsafe staircases. Landlords would also need to ensure that smoke and carbon monoxide alarms had been fitted, and that adequate safety checks on gas and electricity services had been carried out.”
These are not vague, as the picture above shows – they are clear deficiencies, and what I didn’t notice in the landlord’s defence of the status quo was how they would police the kind of disreputable dwelling. This has been going on for decades, and like Attlee points out, it is a social evil “to which we have become accustomed, and which is rarely noticed”
The second point I’d like to note is Attlee’s discussion of economics, which he criticises as often so taken up with an “abstract concept of labour” as to forget the human beings that are the subject of economics, and their basic needs.
He is pointing towards what E.F. Schumacher would later raise in his book – “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered.”. And while Attlee sees the State as an agent of change in intervening, it is people who are important at the end of the day, which is where change must be practice, directed to specific ends, to make a better society for everyone.
To come back to the subject of rental standards, the Landlord's Association has had decades to tidy up their act and bring some kind of self-regulation to prevent slum housing in Jersey. Their failure means the State has to act as an agent of change and intervene.
Advances In Knowledge – Part 1
By Clement Attlee
Looking back on the conditions of the early part of last century and reading of the years of effort that it took to prevent small children, even under seven years of age, from being worked for fourteen or fifteen hours a day in factories and mines, we are amazed at the callousness with which such a state of affairs was regarded, and can hardly conceive how people who were, as we can see, in other affairs intelligent, reasonably humane and enlightened, should not have instantly protested.
Yet at the same time we are ourselves indifferent to numbers of evils to which we have become accustomed, and which are rarely noticed. Probably in a future time it will seem amazing to our descendants that we should have allowed huge slum-areas like East and South London, the Lancashire towns, or the mining villages, to remain for years without taking real action to abolish them. We all imagine that if we had been present in Jerusalem we should not have voted for Barabbas.
In our criticisms of the social workers of the past we are apt to forget how great has been the increase in knowledge since their day. The careful dissection and investigation of social phenomena is a comparatively modern achievement, but it has perhaps done more than any single factor to change the outlook of men and women on social problems.
Early reformers were working in the dark, grappling with evils that had come on society with great suddenness. The causes underlying social discontents had not been investigated, and even the facts were not known to more than a few.
To-day the social worker can profit by the labours of his predecessor, the ground has been explored and mapped out. Research has been made into almost every phase of poverty, and many of its causes have been elucidated.
The older type of social worker was mainly endeavouring to deal with results: he saw that people were hungry, or ill-clad, or sick, and his first impulse was to provide food, clothing and medicine. The existence of classes of the community habitually in this state was taken for granted, and the reasons why they were so were not investigated.
The result too often was that the remedy, dealing as it did with symptoms only, was as bad as the disease. In the same way, many social reformers did not sufficiently realise that the evil which appeared to them to be a cause was in itself only a result. Thus the prevalence of drunkenness would be asserted as a prime cause of poverty, without considering whether in fact drunkenness itself was not due to bad conditions of work, a degrading environment, or the general greyness of life.
During the nineteenth century a great advance was made in the science of preventive medicine. Instead of being concerned almost entirely with healing disease after it had arisen, medical science turned to the improvement of the environment, and the prevention of disease arising. Thus the recognition that a whole group of diseases were bred in the slums, and were due to a low standard of life, led to the public health agitation, and the passing of legislation promoting sanitary reform which has done far more to improve the health of the urban population than any great advances in curative methods.
By analogy from this in social matters we can see that unemployment, for instance, is a disease of an industrial society in our present stage of development, and that no amount of provision for individual men and women will take the place of the removal as far as possible of its causes. In the words of Mr. Sidney Webb it is no good hammering on the bulge, the direct method is often the ineffective one.
There are numbers of social workers who find in the work of research and investigation the best outlet for their desire for social service. Some may be chiefly engaged in investigation into the psychological effects of certain pieces of social machinery, others in the machinery itself. It is almost a distinct motive in itself, this desire to see the machinery of society running smoothly and cleanly.
Such a feeling can be seen running through the works of Mr. H. G. Wells, where he exhibits the disgust of an orderly and scientific mind at the wasteful and chaotic nature of our social arrangements. One has only to compare his Utopias with that of William Morris to see the difference between the scientific and aesthetic appeals to social service. In those of the former the emphasis is on the mechanism of society, and the possibilities of harnessing the forces of nature in order to make attainable a fine life for human beings are worked out in considerable detail and with great imagination. In Morris, on the other hand, there is little attention to the machinery of society, but a very keen realisation of the sort of life he thought best for people.
Thus the scientific motive takes its place as one of the incentives that lead men to devote themselves to social service, and the great influence of the scientific investigator on the methods of social reformers, and on the outlook of those engaged in social work, must be acknowledged.
It has been pointed out above how much the doctrines of the classical economists hampered the efforts of social reformers by practically forbidding all action by the State outside the narrowest lines.
Economics became known as the dismal science : it was thought to be opposed to the efforts of the more earnest reformers, and to render futile all the endeavours of the working classes to improve their industrial position :hence the vehement attacks on it by Ruskin and others. At one time it seemed as if economic science had got entirely out of touch with human life: it had become abstract and academic.
To the man who keenly realised the evils of the industrial system the doctrines of the classical economists seemed to offer little hope of better things. He read for instance of the fluidity of labour, and that if labour was displaced from one industry it would flow to wherever it was needed; that if new processes and increased machinery were introduced, in the long run more men would be employed; but to the man in touch with the sufferings of the unemployed this was cold comfort, for he knew that the long run was often fatal to the man with the short purse.
The economist did not seem to realise that the abstract concept of labour consisted of a number of human beings who were in fact the greater part of the nation. Political economy seemed to be inhuman, in laying stress on how commodities could be most cheaply produced, without enquiring what would be the effect on social conditions.
From this position the science has been rescued through the work of the practical social worker, the experimenter, and the investigator. The transition from the earlier to the later views of J. S. Mill marks the turning of the tide, and since that time the science has become more and more social. It has become the hopeful science.
This changed outlook has been reflected in the policy of the country in regard to social questions.
From complete freedom of contract we have moved to an ever increasing state regulation of conditions. The earlier efforts at regulation of hours of labour, wages, and conditions of work were regarded at the time as rather regrettable exceptional provisions, introduced for the protection of certain classes who were especially weak, women and children. To-day the idea of a minimum wage and a maximum working day is almost generally accepted.
In the same way during the last thirty years the work of the organised community in local affairs has steadily increased, and the question whether a certain industry should be carried on by individual enterprise or collective effort is decided more on grounds of practical convenience than general principle.
Where formerly it was considered that the State was a sort of referee who kept the ring wherein contending individualities had full scope for contest, we now have the conception that it is the duty of the State to act as the co-ordinating factor in making all individual efforts work for the good of the citizens.
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