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The article presents information on the social policy of Great Britain before 1914. The prevalent assumption among historians is that in Britain before 1914 the approach to social policy was overwhelmingly empirical. This empiricism is seen to rest on a tradition of the disinterested study of the causes of poverty formed in the nineteenth century mainly by Charles Booth, or possibly to a lesser extent by the earlier work of Sir John Simon and other administrators of his generation. This article is intended as a contribution to a necessary revaluation of the climate of opinion in which the great social legislation of the 1905 Liberal government occurred. It is concerned with one aspect of Charles Booth's work, his ideas on unemployment which became briefly fashionable although they had little impact on policy. More generally, it is an attempt to describe and explain some of the neglected moral assumptions behind the discussion of policy. Booth and his followers were empirical in their careful study of all the available evidence, especially statistical, on the causes of poverty. But their investigations were influenced by certain prevalent ideas, particularly by a concern for the effects of policy on the character of those whom it relieved, and, among other things, this led them to make a strong distinction between unemployment among the skilled and the unskilled workers.

This article provides information regarding urban poverty in Great Britain from 1880-1920. In his survey of poverty in London, England published in 1889 and 1891 scholar Charles Booth had put forward a classification of the population according to the degree of want or comfort in which they were found. By contrast, in his survey of poverty among the working-class population of York, undertaken in 1899, scholar B.S. Rowntree took a great deal of trouble to obtain information on household income. He used this information to produce a classification of working-class households and also to calculate the number of households in primary poverty. However, Rowntree regarded primary poverty, characterized by family income insufficient for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency, as a mere sub-category within the larger category of poverty. The purpose for which that sub-category was invented or the detailed calculations and assumptions by means of which it was constructed cannot be discussed here. It was complemented by secondary poverty, characterized by family income that would have been sufficient for the maintenance of mere physical efficiency were it not that some of it was absorbed by other expenditure either useful or wasteful. But secondary poverty was simply a residual category, calculated by subtracting the numbers of those in primary poverty from the total of all households in poverty.

This article analyzes some sociological studies and measurement of poverty in Great Britain, conducted in June 1954. In the study authored by Charles Booth and B. Seebohm Rowntree, the families living in poverty was divided into two sections. First, families whose total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. Second, families whose total earnings would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure, either useful or wasteful. The minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were calculated by estimating the nutritional needs of adults and children and by translating such needs into quantities of different foods and hence into money terms, and by adding on to these figures certain minimum sums for clothing, fuel and household sundries, according to the size of the family. The studies that followed adopted the same approach and although there were some minor alterations, the standards used for measuring poverty were broadly the same, adjusted according to change in prices, as that used by Rowntree in 1899.

Charles Booth's seventeen volume Life and Labour of the People of London has been called the first social survey, it demonstrated the techniques of organised social research, and proved an impetus to the Social Survey Movement. In spite of its key position in the emergence of empirical sociology, little attention has been paid to the organisation of Booth's research team winch was to provide a template for the subsequent development of organised social research, nor to the identities of the twenty people who made up the research team, Remarkably for the time, one-quarter of the researchers were women, including the young Beatrice Webb and Clara Collet. This paper looks closely at the personalities and the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In modern Britain, pressure on parliament for social reform has been transmitted not only by mass movements of the people, but by well‐organised pressure groups and small coteries of experts. Driven by intellectual imperatives and by differing ideas of ‘progress’, these experts and activists have directed the impetus for measures to tackle poverty, working conditions, or inequality, mediating a broader sense of pressure from without. In contrast to political histories of social reform, this essay offers a history of ideas for social reform and the methods by which reformers shaped parliament's agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that processes of social reproduction are central to our understanding of body formation under capitalism. Articulated through a feminist historical materialist framework founded on a social ontology that recognises the material foundation of social life as constituted of both productive and reproductive activities, this paper develops the concept of uneven body as a more holistic approach integrating into corporeal geography a social reproduction lens. I explore the social and historical analytical capacity of the concept through a study of food distribution in Britain c.1850-1914 in order to reveal how certain bodies absorbed, mediated and embodied contradictions between production and social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe from the mid-1880s entered a crowded East End of London. Their main source of work was the sweated industries, where seasonal work led many to be living on the edge of subsistence. Attempts to organise and trade unionise Jewish workers was led largely by socialists whose main aim was overturning capitalism and revolution across the Yiddish-speaking world. Supporting local campaigns to improve conditions and pay was a strategy towards that end. This article will explore how Morris Winchevsky's socialist poetry imparts ideas of revolution to poverty-stricken and resistant immigrants. Some poems describe poverty and question its causes, others demand the workers rise up and overthrow the current order. Yet the poems have a cultural capital that goes beyond socialist polemics. Almost entirely unknown, with only a handful translated, the poems throw light on socialists' strategies for generating activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians disagree about how the Edwardian era fits into the jigsaw of secularisation in Britain. Was it a time of religious crisis ( Keith Robbins, Hugh Mc Leod) or a faith society ( Callum Brown)? This article subjects the debate to quantitative scrutiny by examining the available statistics of church attendance and church membership/affiliation for 1901-1914. A mixed picture is reported, with elements of sacralisation and secularisation co-existing. Although churchgoing was already in relative and absolute decline, one-quarter of adults (disproportionately women) still worshipped on any given Sunday and two-fifths at least monthly. Moreover, hardly anybody failed to be reached by a rite of passage conducted on religious premises. Only 1 per cent professed no faith and just over one-half had some reasonably regular and meaningful relationship with organised religion in terms of church membership or adherence. For children, perhaps nine-tenths attended Sunday school, however briefly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviewing two of the latest reports by social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn and 'social justice' champion, Iain Duncan Smith, the article examines the politics and policy of the Coalition's fairness strategy and the jostling for position that is going on behind the scenes. Whilst continuing to pay lip service to the goal of ending child poverty, the government is seeking to redefine the problem, away from a narrow focus on relative low income. Beneath the rhetoric, the article highlights the close similarities between the 'new' and 'old' approaches, finding that the evidence behind the government's claims is unconvincing. Far from offering a 'step-change' in provision, it concludes that in the new age of austerity the Coalition will struggle to make any positive progress on tackling poverty and improving the relative life chances of disadvantaged children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, focusing on Seebohm Rowntree's poverty surveys, considers the importance and durability of the concept of secondary poverty. It argues that secondary poverty was a central component of Rowntree's first survey of York, carried out in 1899, and in his lectures and writing in the Edwardian period. Moreover, secondary poverty remained an important feature of Rowntree's analysis during the interwar years and after the Second World War, and was adopted by other researchers in various ways. Although secondary poverty was not seriously examined in the published version of Rowntree's 1936 York survey, there is evidence that it was originally intended to feature, and it is clear that impressionistic evidence of poverty was gathered by Rowntree's investigators, as had been the case in 1899. Moreover, although it was completely expunged from the third survey of York, carried out by Rowntree and Lavers in 1950, a separate inquiry into secondary poverty was carried out in the early 1950s, with a number of prominent supporters. Subsequently, dissatisfaction with income-based definitions and measurements of poverty allowed the concept of secondary poverty to continue to exercise an influence on the study of poverty in the postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the historical context for the British government's Big Society policy plan, which emphasizes local community and organizational involvement over state control, focusing on historic clashes over notions of the role of society. The author examines various conceptions of society in early British history, including discussions of property, support in time of need, and citizenship, and the influence of intellectuals Thomas Paine and Robert Owen is highlighted. The connection between notions of society and public policy is discussed, and special attention is paid to Great Britain's Poor Laws. Other topics include the thought of liberal thinkers Hilaire Belloc, Seebohm Rowntree, and Ernest Barker.

The extent to which the Unionist victory in the ‘khaki’ general election of 1900 was the result of patriotic sentiment arising from the South African war has long been a source of controversy among historians. Battersea has been cited as an area that was largely unaffected by patriotic and imperial fervour during this period. This article examines the general election campaign in the Battersea constituency. The sitting MP, John Burns, was re-elected despite his opposition to the war, but the Conservatives achieved their highest percentage vote of that at any parliamentary election between 1885 and 1918. While the war was not the only issue raised during the campaign, it was the most prominent and clearly benefited the imperialist and pro-war Conservative candidate. In order to retain his seat Burns had to fight a far more dynamic local campaign than his opponent, and even then he won only narrowly. Although imperial sentiment was not quite enough to oust Burns from this otherwise safe seat, it was the main reason for the strong Conservative performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trade Boards Act of 1909 was introduced in Britain to counteract sweating. Associated with long hours, insanitary work conditions and inadequate pay — with the accent falling on low wages — sweating probably afflicted some 30 per cent of Edwardian Britain's labour force. Trade boards supporters as diverse as Winston Churchill and R. H. Tawney heralded the legislation as marking a significant break in economic and social thought. Opponents declared that the enactment of the legislation would be ruinous for Britain. The future Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and his wife denounced trade boards as pallid reformism and campaigned for the licensing of home workshops. On the other hand, proponents of a subsistence minimum wage, such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, were disappointed that the legislation did not go further. Initially, it encompassed less than a quarter of a million workers. The rates set were not based on the cost of living but on what the individual trade could bear. On their own, trade boards were insufficient to eradicate Britain's long and historical tradition of being a low-paying economy. Trade boards (and their successors, wages councils) were trapped in their collective laissez-faire origins. However, despite its sanctioning of a statutory national minimum wage in 1998, the British state is still far from being interventionist in the labour market. If Britain is to break with the past, she must also implement a comprehensive framework of minimum rights. Otherwise, the principle of collective laissez-faire will still remain triumphant over the Webbs' alternative conception of a comprehensive labour code. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand the impact of the national minimum wage (NMW) on pay, employment and other variables, the Low Pay Commission studies pay setting, coverage of the NMW, competitive versus monopsonistic labour markets, non-compliance, offsets and the interaction between the NMW and the social security system. But similar issues were analysed a century ago by Fabian and other writers. In particular, the 18-page 1906 Tract by W. S. Sanders — the first ever call for a national minimum wage — anticipated all the present debates. That tract is examined here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid increases in manual workers' wages, poverty rates among the elderly remained high in late Victorian England, although they varied significantly across Poor Law Unions. This paper begins by examining the ability of workers to provide for their old age. A data set is constructed, consisting of all English Poor Law Unions in 1891–2, and regression equations are estimated in order to explain variations across unions in pauperism rates. This is followed by the testing of several conjectures made by contemporaries, and repeated by historians, regarding the deterrent effect of workhouse relief, the effects of wages and of the industrial character of Poor Law Unions on pauperism rates, and regional differences in workers' reliance on the poor law. The paper then examines the implications of these results for the debate over national old age pensions in the decades before the adoption of the Old Age Pension Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the idea that the construction of unemployment in turn-of-the-century Great Britain was an attempt simply to normalize employment relations by promoting regular work patterns. An analysis of the Booth survey in terms of the standard of life concept demonstrates the importance of the slum clearance problematic in bringing about the major rethink in policy thinking which ultimately led to the labour exchange project. The peculiar mobilisation patterns promoted by the labour exchange project reflect the difficulty or impossibility of delocalising industry or dock activity into the London suburbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the early impact of Michael Young's book "The Rise of Meritocracy." The author showed how the reviewers of the book understand and approach the book and the issues that the book dealt with. Moreover, he discussed the first impact that the book to the British government, its practical influence, and continuing significance.

This paper focuses on cohabitation and unmarried parenthood across a range of European nations. It includes a brief outline of the history of cohabitation, reviews recent trends in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood, compares the stability of marital and cohabiting unions, examines the extent to which cohabiting couples are regarded as families, and the final sections include a review of the policy responses to date, as well as a discussion of the impetuses that may lie behind the rise in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the proposals for the reform of the welfare state in Great Britain. Characteristics of the welfare system; Proposals to modernize the welfare state; Provisions of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act of 1999 and the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000; Child support reforms; Pension reforms and minimum income guarantee; Child support reform.

Presents news and information on international finance as of December 2000. Decision of the INSOL Lenders Group to finalize its Statement of Principles for a Global Approach to Multi-Creditor Workouts; Recommendation accepted by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law from its Working Group on Insolvency Law; Issuance of the Insolvency Bill 2000 in Great Britain.

In the years 1899-1907 a new critique of alcohol evolved which pointed to increasing female insobriety as a factor in infant mortality. Exploiting the opportunity of a governmental committee appointed to investigate physical deterioration, 14 leading medical doctors, well known for their antipathy to drink, submitted evidence which subsequently formed the basis for the Report's conclusion associating alcoholic abuse with racial deterioration. Between 1905 and 1907 six of these doctors, together with Sir Thomas Brunton and Professor Sims Woodhead, orchestrated concern over drink's deleterious impact on pregnant women and babies. By condemning alcohol as one important source of infant deaths and national inefficiency, these anti-drink doctors, all except one members of the Society for the Study of Inebriety, encouraged the medical profession to adopt a more critical public posture towards drink and compelled the Government to permit hygiene and temperance instruction in elementary school. They further provided the rationale early in 1907 for George Sims' newspaper articles, which emphasized the imperial consequences of Britain's high infant mortality. He alone publicized the prevalence of babies and small children taken into public houses, where they were given alcohol or contracted fatal respiratory disease. Breast milk contaminated with alcohol also endangered their lives. Following these revelations, sympathizers formed the Tribune Committee, and, with the support of the eight anti-drink doctors and others, helped translate Sims' proposal to prohibit children under 14 from licensed premises into legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a preliminary investigation of the long-run trends in employment and retirement of older men in the British labor force between 1881 and 1981. Between 1881 and 1981 the structure of the British labour force was transformed by two fundamental changes in behaviour; the increasing participation in the labour force of married women and declining participation of older men. The economic impact of this development is potentially large--if males over 65 in England and Wales in 1981 had shown the same participation rates as this age group did in 1881, the male population who were economically active would have been greater by 1.9 million, or almost 14 per cent. The almost continuous long-run decline in participation rates on which a number of commentators have attempted to place an interpretation has been shown to a large extent to be a result of structural change in the economy. This finding casts new light on the historical interpretation of aged pauperism and pensions policy since the late Victorian period. Poor law pensions for the aged poor and the payment of state old age pensions from 1909 can be seen as a response to continued industrialization and structural change.

The article presents a list of publications on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of them are "The Religious Census of Sussex 1851," edited by J.A. Vickers; "The Robert Hall Diaries, 1947-53," edited by A. Cairncross; "The Catholic Question in Ireland and England, 1798-1882: The Papers of Denys Scully," by B. MacDermot; "The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley, 1733-64," by J.E. Tierney; "Returns of Papists, 1767," by E.S. Worrall; "The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy," by M. Bailey; "A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village," by J.V. Beckett; "Transhumance Economy, Setting and Settlement in Highland," by A. Bil; "The Empty Fields: The Agricultural Strike of 1914," by R. Brazier; "Towards an Agricultural Geography of Medieval England," by B.M.S Campbell; "The Cost of Capital and Medieval Agriculture Technique," by G. Clark; "British Agricultural Policy, 1912-36: A Study in Conservative Politics," A.F. Cooper; "Harvests of Charge: The Royal Agricultural Society of England, 1838-1988," by N.P.W. Goddard.

The article lists books on the economic and social history of Great Britain and Ireland. Some of the books are: "The Diary of a Victorian Squire," by D. Birchall; "Literature and the Social Order in Eighteenth-Century England," by S. Copley; "Lasting Impressions," by M.A. Dundrow; "The Chronicles of a Wayfarer," by T. Green; "Letters of Edward Jenner and Other Documents Concerning the Early History of Vaccination," edited by G. Miller; "News From the English Countryside, 1851-1950," edited by C. Morsley; "Footplate Days on the Southern," edited by H. Norman; "European Women: A Documentary History," edited by E. Riemer and J. Fout; "Charlton Parish Registers: 1809-29," by J.G. Smith; "Braunstone Probate Inventories: 1532-1831," edited by J. Wilshere; "Kirby Muxloe Probate Inventories: 1547-1783," edited by J. Wilshere; "Capital Grants for Farmers: A Brief History," by S.P. Bingham; "Strict Settlement: A Guide for Historians," by B. English and J. Saville; "The Bridgewater Heritage: The Story of Bridgewater Estates," by C. Garyling and "The Peasant Land Market in Medieval England," by P.D.A. Harvey.

This article discusses the theory and method in recent British sociology. Sociology is an academic discipline that combines a commitment to the empirical investigation of social reality with the aim of comprehending the nature of society theoretically and framing general statements about social structure and process. This twin aims have been pursued in parallel more or less since the subject first came into existence in the late nineteenth century. Yet there has been an enduring tension between them. Over a generation ago, T. H. Marshall, in his LSE inaugural lecture of 1946, called for an effort to overcome the gap which separated the general or theoretical sociologist who becomes a slave to his concepts and on the other the passionately empirical sociologist who may become a slave to his methods. Instead he advocated the pursuit of what he called stepping stones to the middle distance. Others at various times have restated this view. Robert Merton is one of the best known, in two essays dissecting the two-way relationship between sociology theory and empirical research. Edward Shils has suggested that no sociological theorist, however abstract their interests, can carry on their work without feeling that empirical researchers are looking over their shoulder and that ultimately they have to answer them.

Henry George, the American social reformer and Single Tax advocate, had a decisive impact on native British socialism considered apart from the Marxist and revolutionary types imported from the continent. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were hostile critics but the typically English Fabian Society was influenced by George's seminal ideas. The Fabians were especially attracted to two notions: the conception that George gave to the thought of his time, that poverty was an evil preventable by political intervention-by State action; and that the disparity in incomes could be explained by the theory of unearned increment In turn Sydney Olivier, George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Annie Besant, H. G Wells and E. R Pease came under the influence of George. Soon to affect the Fabians, however, was the development of the economist, P. H Wicksteed, beyond George to Jevons and Marginalism. Key figures in the Parliamentary and independent Labour parties almost achieved land value taxation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economics and regional policies in Great Britain. According to the author, its regional policies were essentially economic, which produce few political innovations, and its political regionalism is popular but lacks strong economic foundations. The analysis suggests for more discriminating policies based on social and economic processes. Thus, the country's regional policies have been directed to a simple but pressing needs for work and wages.

Reveals how opposition to the state provision of schooling patronizes workers and ethnic minorities alike in Great Britain, and examines their spontaneous efforts to provide independent education for their children. Education vouchers; Avoiding the 'anti-achievement' dogma; Effect of market forces on the quality and character of education; Parental choice.

Focuses on historical information on the term `welfare' while highlighting welfare in both Britain and the United States with reference to single mothers. Reference to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the United States; Views of work and welfare; Implications for lone mothers; Alternative policy logics.

There is a long established link between poverty and child health, both in the United Kingdom and in other countries. In this review of the literature, the author explores the nature of this link. The paper discusses the historical background and briefly reviews the evidence from the developing countries and the controversy surrounding the definition of poverty before examining the association between child health and poverty in the United Kingdom. The author concludes with some suggestions for future research and some thoughts on the implications for doctors working with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on working class diets in late nineteenth-century Britain. The surveys considered in this article originated partly in the confusion of views about the state of the economy in the 1880's, and partly in the interest aroused by the use of the family budget as a method of investigation on Europe. The collection of family budgets formed part of the examination of the social problem or social question which taxed socially and politically conscious writers in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. These investigations also represented a departure from the traditional approach to the prosperity of the individual, which was a study of prices and money wages. The trend of falling prices and rising money wages produced an unassailable optimism. To combat generalization of this kind, the family budget became a necessity, thus bringing the concept of the cost of living into the economic vocabulary. The British Labour Department of the Board of Trade succeeded in producing the first study on these lines by publishing in 1889.

The article focuses on the condition of the economy and society during the late Victorian era in Great Britain. It also presents information on the occurrence of failing enterprise in the era and industries where export figures showed substantial increases. In general, while the gloomiest versions of the depression have been modified, the pessimists seem so far to have achieved a qualified victory. For absolute decline most analysts would now substitute decelerated growth, and place some emphasis on rising real wages and rising per capita income down to 1896. Decelerated growth has been bracketed with intensified home investment, though the latter concept suffers from lack of detailed substantiation. The importance of the retail stores was not simply as a commercial improvement. They were in many instances unavoidably necessary if the industries whose products they were designed to sell were to work economically. The years of the Great Depression saw great volumes of goods previously supplied (if supplied at all) from the craftsmen of village or town move into the factory stage of production.

The belief that poverty has been virtually eliminated in Great Britain is commonly held. It has been reiterated in parliament and the press and has gained authority from a stream of books and papers published by economists, sociologists and others in the post-war years. In the main the proposition rests on three generalizations, which are accepted as facts. The first is that full employment, combined with larger real wages and the enormous increase in the number of married women in paid employment, has brought prosperity to the mass of the population. The second is that there has been a marked redistribution of income from rich to poor and, indeed, a continuing equalization of income and wealth. And the third is that the introduction of a welfare state has created a net, though some prefer to use the metaphor a feather bed, which prevents nearly all those who are sick, disabled, old or unemployed from falling below a civilized standard of subsistence. The general theory, then, should be that individuals and families whose resources, over time, fall seriously short of the resources commanded by the average individual or family in the community in which they live, whether that community is a local, national or international one, are in poverty.

The article discusses Great Britain's Liberalism and the idea of social justice. The influence of theory on Great Britain's politics was particularly significant in the early years of the twentieth century, when the great social reforms of the Liberal party laid the foundations of a new social unity, the strength of which was tested in World War I, and in the great depression, and won universal admiration after the military collapse of Dunkirk. Between 1906 and 1911 as much important legislation was placed upon the statute books as in the six years from 1832 to 1837. Among the more significant laws were the Trade Disputes Act and the Workman's Compensation Act of 1906, the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the Labor Exchange Act, the Children's Act and the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, and the National Insurance Act of 1911, Although this mass of detailed social legislation was put into effect piece-meal, it was the coherent result of years of discussion and agitation. It was based on a considered view of the State and society.

A reprint of the article "Public Order" by W. Ivor Jennings, which appeared in the January 1937 issue, is presented. Topics include the views of the British middle class regarding communism and the law, the social conditions needed for a dictatorship to emerge, and the relation of the wearing of uniforms to social order in light of the British Public Order Act.

The article focuses on resources for policy studies in Great Britain. There are many reasons why American scholars interested in comparative policy studies should turn to Great Britain, besides the obvious advantage of ease in learning the language. The early establishment of welfare programs in Britain makes it possible to analyze the long-term dynamics of policies, through historical scholarship as well as through contemporary studies. The range of policy issues available for study is as wide in Britain than in the U.S.

This article examines the status of social research and social policy in Great Britain during the nineteenth century. There are two highlights in the conventional account of the growth of social policy in the century before 1914. One in the thirties and forties, the other during the administrations of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith. Such accounts are usually biographical in method, hagiographical in intention and written as histories of legislative landmarks. They present social policy as the practical embodiment of humanitarian zeal flowing from sensitive and anxious Christian consciences. By the time the middle class had been admitted to a junior partner's share in government, the acceleration of industrial development had forced the organization of new methods and agencies for measuring national resources. The rapidly expanding urban environment of industrialism demanded the measurement of human as well as of natural resources. Definition was the essential preliminary to the creation of policies which, for the remainder of the century and beyond, had to escape from the doctrinaire conceptions of the new poor law. This poor law has often been described as the nucleus from which social policy grew.

Discusses how objections to the introduction of real choice between schools in Great Britain, can be refuted and wider choice grafted onto existing institutions. Education vouchers; Costs; Demand; State obstacles.

The British Library is currently staging an exhibition, Taking Liberties, on the history of liberty and democracy in Britain. This article reviews the exhibition. Its verdict is that the BL has done an outstanding job. As well as displaying a wide range of original documents, and providing an enticing means of interaction for visitors, the exhibition reminds us that liberty continues to evolve and its meaning continues to be contested. By showing how the evolution of liberty in Britain has taken centuries, rather than decades, it also reminds us that when we rightly criticise newer democracies for their imperfections, we should remember that the liberties of their citizens have evolved at a far faster rate than we ever achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Application Programming Interface (API) Connected Histories, an online resource providing access to materials concerning British history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The API allows users to access several online databases and resources, including British History Online, British Museum Prints and Drawings, and the Clergy of the Church of England Database. The author notes that Connected Histories was funded by the e-Content Programme of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and is located at http://www.connectedhistories.org.