How Elizabethan legislation as soon as protected the poor from the excessive value of residing – and led to unrivalled financial prosperity

Within the closing years of Elizabeth I’s reign, England noticed the emergence of arguably the world’s first efficient welfare state. Legal guidelines had been established which efficiently protected folks from rises in meals costs.

Greater than 400 years later, within the closing years of Elizabeth II’s reign, the UK as soon as once more faces perilous spikes in residing prices. Maybe right this moment’s authorities may be taught one thing from its legislative ancestors.

Till the top of the sixteenth century, it was a given all through medieval Europe that when meals costs rose there can be a consequent surge in mortality charges, as folks starved to demise and illnesses unfold among the many malnourished.

The Elizabethan Poor Legal guidelines of 1598 and 1601 turned the scenario in England on its head. Now when meals grew to become too costly, native parishes had been obliged to provide money or meals to those that couldn’t afford to eat. For the primary time in historical past, it grew to become unlawful to let anyone starve.

The legal guidelines had been clear and easy, and required every of over 10,000 English parishes to arrange a steady reduction fund to assist the susceptible. This included the lame, the sick and the outdated, in addition to orphans, widows, single moms and their kids, and people unable to search out work. Occupiers of land (landowners or their tenants) needed to pay a tax in the direction of the fund in proportion to the worth of their holding.

Overseen by native magistrates, the system’s transparency supplied no loopholes for avoiding the tax. In reality, it inspired a flourishing tradition of charitable giving which supplied almshouses, apprenticeships and hospitals for the parish poor to alleviate destitution.

With this proliferation of localised mini-welfare states, England grew to become the primary nation in Europe by greater than 150 years to successfully put an finish to widespread famine. And it additionally enabled England subsequently to get pleasure from by far the quickest charge of urbanisation in Europe.

Between 1600 and 1800, big numbers of younger folks left rural parishes to search out work in cities, protected within the data that their dad and mom can be supported by the parish in occasions of want – and that they themselves would obtain assist if issues didn’t work out. Lengthy earlier than the primary steam engines arrived, the Poor Legal guidelines had created an city workforce which enabled the economic revolution to take off.

Poor state of affairs

Then in 1834, every part modified. The price of this stage of welfare assist was deemed too excessive, and changed with a intentionally harsh new system through which the poorest women and men had been separated from one another and their kids and supplied solely with gruel in return for tedious chores in degrading workhouses. The concern of the workhouse was designed to pressure the poor to want work – for no matter abysmal wages the market supplied.

It’s this model of the Poor Legal guidelines which tends to stay within the in style reminiscence, acquainted from the books of Charles Dickens, and obscuring the achievements of the Elizabethan unique. However intensive latest analysis has began to spotlight how Elizabethan legislation modified British historical past – and supplies us with pressing classes for right this moment’s welfare system and the pressures of the cost-of-living disaster.

Simply because the outdated Poor Legal guidelines supported a rare interval of financial prosperity, so too did the UK’s welfare state after the second world warfare. Tax-funded funding in schooling (secondary and better), and the newly-created NHS noticed widened alternatives and residing requirements take off, because the UK loved over twenty years of the quickest productiveness development in its historical past (1951-73).

As we speak, folks often communicate of being compelled to decide on between consuming and heating as meals and vitality costs surge. But there isn’t any corresponding compensation for these whose wages and advantages don’t stretch far sufficient. A one-off hand out when tens of millions of households are dealing with each gas and meals poverty is however a short lived sticking plaster.

Till there’s a everlasting enhance in security internet funds to these on common credit score, meals banks will proceed to proliferate and youngsters will proceed to go to high school hungry. The hyperlink between wealth and taxation was successfully utilized by the Elizabethans to begin to deal with inequality. However right this moment’s globalised economic system facilitates offshore earnings and ever-rising inequality.

In my new e book, After the Virus: Classes from the Previous for a Higher Future I discover modifications within the sense of ethical obligation and the rigorously legislated collective endeavour that shaped the inspiration of the UK’s previous – and most up-to-date – intervals of prosperity.

The Poor Legal guidelines had been removed from an ideal system of welfare. However the truth that defending the poorest in society has beforehand led to widespread financial development is a historical past lesson that shouldn’t be ignored by any authorities throughout a cost-of-living disaster.