ABSTRACT
Three general important factors have influenced the development of social security in the 1950s and 1960s: the economic prosperity of the country, new views on the concept of poverty and the growing trend towards consensus politics. Apart from outdoor relief, three main methods were employed by the parishes to deal with poverty: the workhouse, the Roundsman system and the Speenhamland system. The suggestion that government policies for poverty have safeguarded the interests of the ruling classes does not deny that these policies also benefited some groups of the poor in varying degrees. The collapse of feudalism meant that a new relationship between the ruling class and the working class was necessary. The sickness and the unemployment insurance schemes of 1911 were extended so that by the outbreak of the Second World War they covered most of the working-class population. The Second World War was much more fertile in social policy planning than the First World War.
