At the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, rapid eco­nom­ic growth was tak­ing place as the in­dus­tri­al age was tru­ly un­der way. Through hard work and pur­su­ing the few ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties that pre­sent­ed them­selves, a per­son could rise to hold a pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing in life af­ter start­ing with next to noth­ing.

How­ev­er, even though there were tremen­dous wealth op­por­tu­ni­ties be­ing cre­at­ed, there still ex­ist­ed squalor and ex­treme pover­ty. Ob­serv­ing this trou­bling jux­ta­po­si­tion, Beat­rice Webb (nee Pot­ter) sug­gest­ed that there should be leg­is­la­tion to guar­an­teed a "na­tion­al min­i­mum" stan­dard of liv­ing. In­deed, no one has a greater claim to the in­ven­tion of the idea of the mod­ern wel­fare state than Beat­rice Webb. She found an able al­ly in the new "thun­der­er on the left," Win­ston Churchill, who, at the age of 33, be­came the pres­i­dent of the Board of Trade. From this po­si­tion he pushed for the cre­ation of the "Min­i­mum Stan­dard."

Churchill de­fined his min­i­mum in terms of five el­e­ments and list­ed them as his leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties: un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance, dis­abil­i­ty in­sur­ance, com­pul­so­ry ed­u­ca­tion to age 17, pub­lic works jobs in road build­ing or state af­foresta­tion in lieu of poor re­lief, and na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the rail­ways. The eco­nom­ic hard­ships of 1907 Eng­land gave Churchill's pro­pos­al im­me­di­a­cy, and hence was born the wel­fare state.

Fast-for­ward to present day T&T. Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments since In­de­pen­dence have re­in­forced the ex­is­tence of the wel­fare state. How­ev­er, where­as Churchill's wel­fare state was cre­at­ed to ad­dress a so­cial cri­sis, what we now find is that the wel­fare state has now be­come the pre­cur­sor that per­pet­u­ates the vi­cious cy­cle of pover­ty. We are one of the few coun­tries that of­fer free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, we have a large so­cial safe­ty net and we live in very po­lit­i­cal­ly sta­ble coun­try; so what are the rea­sons? Have we con­di­tioned in­di­vid­u­als to ex­pect a gov­ern­ment to take care of their every need?

This would im­ply that the wel­fare state has gone too far, where it is now sti­fling the in­nate dri­ve of the hu­man be­ing to strive to im­prove their po­si­tion in life. A gov­ern­ment would do well to re­assess its so­cial pro­grammes; un­for­tu­nate­ly, do­ing so may be po­lit­i­cal sui­cide. How­ev­er, we can­not con­tin­ue down this road of pro­vid­ing hand­outs. Any gov­ern­ment that has the gump­tion to tru­ly use wel­fare ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly will be the sav­iour of this na­tion.

Steve See­ta­hal

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