ABSTRACT
The idea that the State both could and should evolve a social policy aimed at improving standards of living for its citizens took root in the first decade of the twentieth century. The revelation of the depth and scale of poverty by Booth, Rowntree and others, the depressions which killed the notion that an unregulated economy would thrive and a regulated one falter, the fact that over 60 per cent of adult males had the vote after 1884, all these played their part in redefining the role of the State. Many of the leading theorists of State intervention were on the progressive wing of the Liberal party. L.T. Hobhouse (1864–1929), a Professor of Sociology, argued that the State should ensure the means of maintaining civilized living standards, from which base men would the more readily help themselves and their families to independence and even prosperity (17e). Winston Churchill (1874–1965), who had left the Tory party in 1904 over the free trade issue, was more of a practical politician and argued that the Liberal party was the only organization which could ensure both progress and democratic advance. Though he denied any antithesis between individualism and collectivism, he recognized that the complexity of early twentieth-century society demanded more State intervention (17b).
