CHAPTER 26: LUMP SUM PAYMENTS

Poor law precedents and voluntary effort Under the poor law, many local authorities made provision for the replacement of durable items such as clothing and blankets. A Local Government Board circular on relief to widows and children, in October 1914, stressed the desirability of affording relief before the family resources, such as the stock of clothing, bedding, etc., are so depleted as to render it impossible afterwards to deal with the case without making good the deficiency. Liverpool families receiving allowances from the board in 1935 had previously received clothing, footwear or blankets from the PAC, while the London I district officer reported that most of the authorities in that district had in the past supplied childrens boots every six or nine months.
1 2 3

Local authority provision of clothing and boots for school children was particularly prevalent in parts of Scotland and Wales where, a UAB official wrote in 1939, boots for school children seem to have rained down like manna from above. Scotland, however, differed from England and Wales in that the Scottish education authorities had a duty to ensure that school children were adequately clothed, while in England and Wales local authorities could make such provision only under the poor law. From the boards point of view, this was an important distinction, since unemployed people within the scope of the board could not receive assistance under the poor law but had as much right as anyone else to assistance from the education authorities.
4

A number of voluntary organisations were also engaged in the provision of clothing and bedding to the unemployed and their families - most notably the Personal Service League (PSL), which embodied in a remarkable way the concern of upper and middle class women for the plight of the unemployed. The PSL had been founded in February 1932, in response to a call for personal service by the Prince of Wales after his much publicised tour of the distressed areas. Its patroness was Queen Mary, its birthplace the Ladies Carlton Club, and its principal object the collection and distribution of funds, materials and clothing of all kinds, for the assistance and relief of those in distress, in or through unemployment, and other exceptional circumstances or occurrences. Tom Jones wrote to his daughter in March 1933, after meeting the Leagues president, Lady Londonderry:
5

She and Lady Reading and Lady Peel and other society stars are running the Personal Service League which stirs up the leisured class to give or make garments for the distressed areas and does this with much success. Most of them have suddenly discovered after ten years that there are workless men and women short of food and clothing, and they want to cover the land with depots for free distribution.
6

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Used clothing collected in prosperous parts of the country was supplemented by the purchase of new clothing and blankets and the organisation of work parties to make garments, especially womens underwear. These were distributed to the needy areas in proportion to their unemployment rates and issued by local committees to unemployed people and their families. Garments were handed out at an average rate of over a million a year between 1933 and 1936. Applying to the local PSL committee could, however, be demeaning. A UAB official, Dora Ibberson, reporting on a meeting with the PSLs chairman, Lady Reading, in January 1935, wrote: Every parcel must contain a proportion of used clothing and the garments most needed are not always available. The local committees were so arranged that some member knows practically every applicant for assistance. ... the best type of unemployed are too proud to apply. Even so, stocks were inadequate to meet the demand. In Wales, only about half the cases investigated were helped and many were not even investigated. At best, the service was seasonal, the Leagues activities ceasing at the end of March and recommencing in October. To its aristocratic sponsors this may have seemed part of the natural order of things, but it was hardly helpful to unemployed people whose clothes were as likely to wear out in April as in October.
7 8

The pots and pans clause The idea that the board should make lump sum payments for clothing and household equipment took shape during Violet Markhams tour of northern cities in September 1934. Summing up her impressions of life under the transitional payments means test, she wrote: Though scales have varied in different localities there is general agreement that there is no margin for replacing clothes, blankets, etc. ... The question of replacements is getting cumulatively serious. Charitable bodies, notably the Personal Service League, have done excellent work in providing clothes and blankets, but again the question of a time limit to their activities arises. Also it is hard for the unemployed to be dressed in perpetuity by charity. The question of half-yearly vouchers for clothes and blankets was discussed by me at many interviews and with one or two exceptions this method was favoured.
9

She proposed, therefore, that the regulations should allow an applicant who had been unemployed for at least six months to apply to the board for a discretionary allowance (or credit) for household or personal replacements.
10

Despite doubts expressed by other board members (Jones argued that applicants should be trusted to put money aside from their weekly allowances, while Strohmenger feared a flood of demands), a paragraph was added to the regulations:
11

A final assessment may be increased to provide for needs of an exceptional character by such amount as is reasonable.
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A press notice issued by the Ministry of Labour in December 1934 explained its purpose: ... the Boards officers are given power under what will no doubt come to be known as the Pots and Pans Clause to deal with exceptional requirements of a non-recurrent character, such as, for example, if it were discovered on investigation that a household is in immediate distress through want of adequate clothing, bedding, or other necessary household equipment.
12

In the 1936 regulations, the pots and pans clause was slightly expanded, referring to needs of an exceptional character whether arising from prolonged unemployment or otherwise, but the new wording implied no change of policy. The board and the PSL The boards initial instructions might have been designed to ensure that the pots and pans clause was used as sparingly as possible. After stressing that weekly allowances were intended to cover all normal foreseeable needs including renewal of clothing and household equipment, the instruction continued: It is possible, however, that cases may occur when in face of obvious distress an additional special allowance will be required. It is anticipated that such occasions will be rare ... Should any cases occur the officer should, if possible, seek the directions of his District Officer before giving any determination under the authority of the clause. If the urgency of the case precludes such prior consultation, the officer must meet the situation, like any other emergency, with prudence and proper consideration, and as if the call were on his private purse. The facts and circumstances should then be made the subject of a special report.
13

The board soon found itself facing conflicting pressures. On the one hand, the events leading to the standstill were blamed in part on its failure to make sufficient use of discretion. In response to this criticism, less negative instructions were issued in February 1935. Investigating officers were asked to note the condition of applicants homes and draw attention to cases of obvious distress for fuller investigation, preferably by a woman officer, after which a lump sum payment could be made subject to district office approval. Less urgent needs could be met by increasing the weekly allowance for a period.
14

At the same time, the board was under pressure from the PSL. The attitudes of Lady Reading and her vice-chairman, Joan (the Hon Mrs Sydney) Marsham to the board and its pots and pans clause were ambivalent. In principle, they disapproved of the board meddling in what they saw as the proper sphere of voluntary effort. But their disapproval was tempered by the knowledge that voluntary effort alone could not meet the accumulated needs of the long-term unemployed. The policy they advocated, therefore, was that the board should meet existing needs on a once-for-all basis and then retire from the field,
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leaving voluntary bodies to help with replacements as and when the need arose. A committee of the boards non-official members (Markham, Hallsworth, Jones and Reynard) was set up to examine the general question of clothing and the statements made by the PSL as to the gravity of the situation. As an aid to its deliberations, Lady Reading submitted a very slight memorandum by Mrs Marsham and herself, demonstrating the impossibility of using the pots and pans clause to provide for replacements on a continuing basis. The memorandum condemned grants of money as a most dangerous way of giving relief: in many cases it would be misspent. Vouchers on local shops would result in the recipients paying inflated prices (the PSL, Lady Reading claimed, could obtain boots at a third of the retail price). Provision in kind through government stores would require large numbers of small centres each carrying large stocks. Finally, the PSL ladies rejected (as the board itself would certainly have done) the possibility of the PSL or any other voluntary agency operating the pots and pans clause on the boards behalf.
15 16

The clothing committee commenced its work by launching investigations in various parts of the country. The main investigation by Dora Ibberson in south Wales, north-east England and Liverpool involved visits to 77 families: 45 on behalf of the board and 32 with representatives of the PSL and other voluntary bodies. Her findings amply confirmed the PSLs statements. She wrote: The parents seem to have forgotten what it is to wear new clothes and there is widespread need, especially of trousers, footgear for all ages and underclothing for adults of both sexes. Respectable people, she reported, were obliged to sleep four and five to a bed. Blanket stocks were rapidly disappearing through wear, younger households had often been able to acquire only a single pair for the whole family, and in very poor households the children slept under a pile of old coats as presumably they always have done. Kitchen utensils and crockery, which could be bought from Woolworths, were less of a problem.
17

Similar conclusions, but with more emphasis on the need for cooking utensils, emerged from visits by women officers to 62 Liverpool families selected from the boards registers, each with three school-age children. Several families used one pan for all cooking and had no kettle. The children appeared warmly and cleanly clad but their boots were often badly worn. The adults wore second-hand and cast-off clothing. Relatively few families had applied to the PAC or voluntary bodies for help with clothing and bedding, but there were indications that they would be less reluctant to apply to the board.
18

The Ibberson report suggested two measures which were broadly in line with the PSLs views. The first - somewhat tentative in view of the cost was for payment by the board of reconditioning grants to make good deficiencies in household stocks. Eligibility would be based on duration of unemployment and the familys income over a given period. The second, much firmer, recommendation was for a subsidised voluntary savings scheme to enable applicants themselves to pay for replacements.
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The clothing committees report endorsed the savings scheme proposal but proposed an extremely restricted role for the pots and pans clause, justifying this on three grounds. First, it noted that the clause enabled the board to meet only needs of an exceptional character, and the need to replace clothing and household equipment which have worn out cannot be regarded as exceptional. Secondly, the committee considered it most undesirable that the Board should pursue a policy which would make superfluous the excellent voluntary organisations that are already in the field and it therefore recommended that the board should intervene only where there was no local organisation able and willing to help. Thirdly, it stressed the importance of encouraging applicants to take responsibility for their own needs. Where the need was so urgent that a lump sum payment was unavoidable, the committee recommended that it take the form of a loan, recoverable by deductions from the normal weekly allowance (use of the word loan was carefully avoided, since the board had no legal power to make loans as such, though it did have the power to reduce the weekly allowance where there were special circumstances). Outright grants would be made only where the need resulted from an unpredictable event such as a fire.
19

These conclusions were reported to the PSL and, after further negotiations, new instructions were issued by the board in August 1935, which differed significantly from the clothing committees recommendations and were to remain in force throughout the period with which we are concerned. There was no mention of a savings scheme (as explained below, enquiries into the feasibility of such a scheme were in progress but were to prove abortive). Grants, rather than loans, were to be made not only in cases of urgent and unpredictable need but also to replace clothing or household equipment which was worn out or had been sold or pawned, subject to three conditions: that the need was exceptional (needs which were common to a large section of the Boards applicants were not to be regarded as exceptional); that, taking account of the applicants income over the past two years, he could not reasonably have made provision for the need (this condition was relaxed in April 1936 in response to complaints by the PSL that too few grants were being awarded); and that he undertook to put part of his allowance aside for future needs. Only cases where the applicant could not be relied on to do this, or where small sums were needed urgently for items such as boots or underclothing, were to be referred to the district officer for consideration of a loan, and the instructions stressed that this was not to be done if the case could reasonably be dealt with by other means. Little is known about the number of loans made under these instructions, but in most parts of the country it was probably small. In one month, March 1939, for which information is available, only 96 loans were made, and 65 of these were in two districts: London I and Sheffield. At a district officers conference that month, Stuart King deprecated the practice, pointing out that it meant reducing an allowance on which the applicant was already unable to manage, thus
20 21

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making it quite impossible for him to provide for future long-term needs, although the feeling of the meeting was generally in favour of loans as a means (in Miss Markhams words) of meeting the urgent needs of the shiftless minority without putting a premium on shiftlessness.
22

As for the PSL and other voluntary bodies, instead of treating them as the first line of defence, as envisaged by the clothing committee, the instructions assigned them a residual role. Only where it was clear at the outset that assistance by the board was not justified would information be passed, with the applicants agreement, to another agency which would contact him/her if it was prepared to help (if the agency in question was the PSL, its name was not to be mentioned to the applicant by the boards officer). Judging by the number of grants made under the pots and pans clause, shown in table 3 at the end of this chapter, however, it seems reasonable to conclude that, in practice, voluntary effort remained the main source of help with clothing needs in most parts of the country.
23

A savings scheme? The savings scheme idea had obvious attractions: it would neither inhibit the activities of voluntary bodies nor involve the board in making recurrent grants under the pots and pans clause, and it was hoped that negotiations between the board and suppliers would enable applicants to obtain goods on advantageous terms. Members of the clothing committee sought the views of a number of social workers on the proposal. Their reactions varied, the one point of unanimity being the iniquity of the existing clothing club system, summed up by Dorothy Keeling, general secretary of the Liverpool Personal Service Society, as follows: (1) It is usually calculated that for a 1 clothing check only 12s. worth of clothing is bought. The agent who collects the order receives 1s. from the woman giving it. Further he gets 1s.6d. in each 1 on its collection and thirdly the clothing check company and the shop have to get their profits. (2) Contributors ... get the clothing as soon as they have paid the first instalment so that they are often worn out before paid for, and it is a very great temptation to take out further checks in order to buy additional clothing before the first order is paid for. ... (3) A very large number of County Court cases are started by clothing companies, and the costs of these of course add very much to the cost of the clothing to those people who cannot or will not keep up regular payments.
24

Unemployed people themselves did not necessarily share these views. When Hallsworth spoke to members of the Jarrow Unemployed Workmens Club in February 1935, he found that they were all making use of clubs and spoke highly of mail order catalogues which they felt offered value for money. They acknowledged the risks of joining more
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clubs than they could afford and of finding that the goods were worn out before they were paid for, but their unanimous opinion was that a savings scheme would be of no use to them or their wives: they could not wait for the goods until they had saved the money. Hallsworth concluded that there was little point in pursuing the idea.
25

Despite this discouragement, the clothing committees report, as noted above, recommended a savings scheme as the principal form of provision for clothing and household equipment needs which could not be met by voluntary organisations. The proposal, however, came to nothing. One reason was the opposition of officials to the idea of the board subsidising the scheme; this, it was argued, would amount to an admission that the boards allowances were inadequate. Another was the reaction of the trade associations with whom Strohmenger discussed the possibility of special terms for the boards applicants. While the Drapers Association were willing to co-operate, the multiple store firms saw difficulties in treating applicants as a privileged class and the co-operatives were suspicious and thought that some device was afoot for taking their trade away. If the board could not provide a subsidy and the traders would not offer discounts, a voluntary savings scheme was not viable; and, although urged to do so by the PSL, the board was not prepared to make it compulsory. The idea was quietly buried.
26 27 28

Reconditioning In May 1935, shortly after the completion of the clothing committees report, Violet Markham made a new proposal, for a special enquiry into the clothing and household equipment stocks of householder applicants who had been unemployed throughout 1933 and 1934, with a view to a reconditioning grant. The proposal was accepted, instructions were issued in August 1935 and a systematic enquiry was launched, starting in South Wales. Investigating officers were asked to report on the home conditions of applicants with dependants, unemployed for two years or more, whose allowance from the board was not more than 45s. a week, whose income from transitional payments had been at least 2s. less than their current allowance, and who had little or no other resources. Those appearing to be in need were listed for fuller investigation. By the end of 1935 the enquiry had been extended to north-east England and parts of Scotland, and in March 1936 it was extended to the rest of the country.
29 30 31 32

In the early stages of the enquiry, only about one in four families without other resources were found to satisfy the income conditions. Of these, only about a third were thought to require further investigation, which did not necessarily lead to a grant: in Wales about 4,800 investigations in October-December 1935 resulted in only 2,900 grants, while some 3,500 investigations in 1936 produced 1,237 grants. Over the whole country, out of some 22,000 exceptional needs grants in 1936, nearly 9,600 resulted from the special enquiry. Grants were mainly for household equipment, in particular beds and bedding. The
33 34 35

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Cardiff and Swansea district officers both drew attention to cases where grants had enabled separate sleeping accommodation to be provided for children of different sexes.
36

We noted, in chapter 7, Violet Markhams views on the unsuitability of ex-public assistance staff reared in the worst traditions of the Poor Law for delicate personal enquiries about household clothes and bedding. Area offices, she reported, had mobilised their female staff, mainly typists and clerks, for the special enquiry. The quality of their work, she wrote, rather upset the views I hold about trained social workers, but she questioned whether a girl of 21 with a typists training or a girl of about the same age who has been a music teacher should be left to struggle with the many perplexing problems raised by these households, many of whom needed moral as well as material help. She proposed, therefore, that in one or two districts where pots and pans cases were numerous, older women with social work experience should be appointed as welfare officers to keep in touch with the families, help the younger investigating staff and mobilise other services where appropriate. The regional officers were consulted and were generally in favour of the proposal. At a board meeting a few days later, however, it was emphatically rejected by both members and officials. The main objections were that the welfare officers would usurp the functions of other public officials such as health visitors and medical officers and - the view expressed by Matthews, the assistant secretary responsible for staffing - that welfare work was a function of all the boards officers and the appointment of specialist welfare officers would cause serious staff difficulties. Even Markhams ally Tom Jones opposed the idea, arguing that if welfare work was to be done it should be done by the (as yet non-existent) local advisory committees. Deeply offended, she wrote to him after the meeting:
37 38 39

Surely it is not criminal to try and make an effort however small and possibly futile to remedy some of the appalling conditions in the S. Wales households? But by the time you and Eady had both done with me I felt that there was no place for me in the Boards work except to be an obedient automaton at Board meetings.
40

On the same day Eady wrote an apologetic letter conceding that, if the advisory committees did not carry out the proposed welfare function, her proposal would have to be considered. For the foreseeable future, however, it was clear that the board would not employ its own welfare officers for this or any other purpose.
41

School childrens clothing Early in 1935, a Scottish local authority, Fife County Council, asked the board to reimburse the cost of clothing supplied by the council to school children whose parents were receiving allowances from the board. Scottish education authorities, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, had a statutory duty to ensure, if necessary by direct provision, that
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children were not prevented by lack of food or clothing from taking full advantage of their education. Nearly 90,000 was spent on clothing in 1933-34, about 63,000 by a single authority, Glasgow. Fife, like Glasgow, issued clothing twice a year, while a number of other authorities made annual issues of boots and stockings. The boards regional officer reported that it was the rule rather than the exception for the children of our applicants throughout the counties of Lanark, Renfrew and Ayr to get these grants.
42 43

The boards reply to Fife was that, in deciding whether to make payments for exceptional needs, the board must apply its own standards (the councils income limits for larger families were substantially above the boards scale) and that, in any case, there could be no question of direct reimbursement to the council. After further correspondence, the council announced in May 1937 that, as the boards allowances were intended to cover the cost of boots and clothing, it would in future refer applicants for these items to the boards local office. The board replied that its officers would have to be satisfied, before making a payment, that the need was exceptional or there were special circumstances. It is not known in how many cases those conditions were found to be satisfied, but it was reported in 1939 that the councils policy had thrown a great deal of work on the boards officers.
44 45 46

The board responded in similar terms to a suggestion that it should pay for food and clothing supplied by the Glasgow education authority to the children of applicants taken over from the public assistance authority in April 1937. Glasgow even threatened to prosecute the parents concerned for failure to clothe their children adequately out of their allowances from the board. This would have caused considerable embarrassment to the board and the government, but the board refused to be intimidated and the threat was not carried out.
47

In England and Wales, education authorities had no power to provide clothing. When some of them asked to be given this power, the Board of Education replied that it was a function of the public assistance committees. The PACs, however, could not assist families receiving allowances from the board and pressure was put on the board to meet the needs identified by teachers, in particular for footwear. An interdepartmental committee of officials appointed in 1936 at Oliver Stanleys suggestion (he was now President of the Board of Education) accepted that there was a real problem, especially in urban areas, but argued that the solution must depend on whether school childrens footwear was regarded as a matter of such importance that the principle of parental responsibility ... should be subordinated to it. If so, the simplest remedy was to give the education authorities similar powers to those in Scotland. But the disadvantages of such a course were emphasised. Voluntary effort would be discouraged (in Scotland, the committee noted, it was largely non-existent); it would be difficult to prevent lavish provision by some authorities, while others might have difficulty in meeting the cost; and it would imply that the allowances paid by the board and the PACs were inadequate. The alternative
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advocated by the committee and duly adopted was on the lines of the boards recent agreement with the West Riding (Yorkshire) education authority: local authorities would investigate cases of inadequate footwear reported by teachers, explain to the parents their responsibilities and report to the board or the PAC any special circumstances meriting consideration by them. If the board or PAC decided that a payment was not justified, the case would be referred back to the education authority to consider what further steps should be taken, including proceedings against the parents under the Children and Young Persons Act. For the children of low wage earners, voluntary agencies would remain the only source of assistance - a situation which was to continue until section 51 of the 1944 Education Act gave English and Welsh education authorities the power they wanted to provide clothing for needy school children.
48 49

Thus far, the board had avoided any general responsibility for the clothing needs of school children, maintaining the principle that its weekly allowances were sufficient for such needs. Towards the end of 1936, however, the director of education for Glamorgan reported that nearly 13,000 elementary school children in the county were, in the opinion of head teachers, in need of footwear and nearly 10,000 in need of clothing. Eadys anxiety, expressed earlier that year, to demonstrate the boards concern for the plight of the unemployed in south Wales where many would be facing cuts in their allowances under the new regulations, was noted in chapter 17. We could, he had written, relax appreciably the standards we are at present adopting for the grant of clothing and household equipment ... without creating any serious social consequences. In November - three days after the hunger marchers reached London - Eady was present when a deputation from Glamorgan was received at the Board of Education. He suggested that lists of school children in need of clothing should be sent to the boards area officers, who would identify those with parents receiving allowances from the board and, where appropriate, offer assistance. This was approved by the board the following day, in view of the general position in South Wales. The county council was less enthusiastic (it wanted a direct government grant to enable it to provide for the childrens needs) but eventually agreed to supply lists for a number of black spots: Merthyr, Tonypandy, Caerphilly, Bargoed, Bridgend and Maesteg. The lists comprised 5,866 children, 3,809 of them in families dependent on the board. Grants for boots and clothing were made for 1,703 children in 888 families. The others were turned down on a variety of grounds, mainly that the need was not urgent, had already been met, or could be met from the familys resources. Reports by the area officers involved in the exercise were on the whole disapproving. The area officer for Bargoed wrote:
50 51 52

Any over-generosity on the part of the Boards Officers would have dire results. Experience has shown that a special grant in a certain street leads to many applications from other residents.

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The Tonypandy area officer was opposed to exceptional needs grants being used to correct the results of mismanagement and suggested that a savings scheme of the kind that the board had already considered would save public money, would help to prove the theory that U.A. allowances are comprehensive, would remove the grievance that the best type of applicant feels, and often expresses, that the neer-do-wells are getting away with more than their share, and finally, might do something to inculcate in applicants habits of thrift and self-reliance which unconditional Exceptional Needs grants will never induce. The Maesteg area officer concluded his report: I am afraid that the matter of clothing and boots in this district is a permanent question, and am of the opinion that if a similar enquiry is made in this district say 8 weeks hence deficiencies in this direction will be found.
53

The south Wales initiative was not, in fact, repeated either there or elsewhere, the boards policy remaining as agreed in June 1936: its officers would not refuse to investigate cases referred by an education authority but the normal assumption would be that parents could and should provide clothing and footwear out of their weekly allowances. Local variations The number and types of grants for exceptional needs varied, depending on local conditions and attitudes. The need for household equipment, particularly bedding, was particularly acute in areas, mainly in Scotland, where large numbers of families were being rehoused under slum clearance programmes. A Scottish district officer, quoted in the boards annual report for 1937, wrote: The destruction of old and verminous bedding and furnishings often leaves the Boards client in a condition of extreme difficulty, and it is often calamitous to our applicant to be the lucky possessor of a new house of four apartments when he had only one apartment previously. Where his furnishings have not been destroyed, the Board may have to help to meet the removal expenses and then supplement the meagre equipment.
54

In south Wales, clothing grants for applicants or household members starting work were particularly common. As early as June 1935, the Cardiff district officer reported that exceptional needs grants in that district were almost limited to clothing grants for young people leaving to take up work in other areas. In March 1939, 17.4 per cent of the grants in England and Scotland were for people starting work, but in Wales 74.8 per cent were of this kind. In the Cardiff district the proportion was as high as 90.7 per cent (507 out of 559), despite attempts by the regional officer to stem the flow. Apart from south Wales, the only district with an abnormal number of starting work
55 56

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grants was Carlisle, where they had first been made on a substantial scale in 1937 to enable applicants to take advantage of new employment opportunities and the practice, once established, had continued - an interesting example of the way in which local discretionary practices can outlast the purposes for which they were adopted. A less easily explainable local phenomenon occurred in the London II district where, it was reported, a disturbing feature is the number of grants given to retrieve articles from pawn.
57

Other needs Although the pots and pans clause was both intended and used mainly for household equipment and clothing needs, there was virtually no limit (other than the ban on meeting medical needs) to the purposes for which it could be used. For example, travelling expenses were paid in a variety of situations, including that of 41 men from Warwickshire stranded at Thurso in the extreme north of Scotland in January 1939. The board decided that it would be cheaper to pay their fares home than to keep them in Thurso. There were also a few cases where the board paid the cost of emigration, including that of a family moving to Australia. Again, the grant was given on the basis that it was likely to save money in the long run.
58 59

In other situations, where the award of a grant would not result in a net saving, the board was less generous. Payments were sometimes made for visiting a member of the family in hospital, but when the question of travelling expenses to attend a close relatives funeral arose, the board decided that payments should generally be refused (district officers were asked to convey this policy to area officers by word of mouth, not by written instructions). Grants were sometimes made for removal expenses where an applicant found work in another part of the country, but an applicant whose wife had been advised by her doctor to move from Aberdeen to Glasgow was refused a grant. A payment of 20s. was made to a Devon man for the cost of his son aged 16 sitting a civil service examination, but this was less than half the amount actually spent on fees and fares. Payments for council housing deposits were generally refused on the grounds that they were repayable at the end of the tenancy. Grants of 5 for the legal costs of divorce proceedings were refused, despite the boards solicitors advice that payment of legal costs might sometimes be justified.
60 61 62 63

Grants were sometimes made for maternity needs where help was not available from other sources, but the money was generally not paid until after the birth, for reasons explained in a letter to a hospital almoner: ... we have to bear in mind in making payments out of public funds, that grants made a considerable time ahead of the eventuality they are designed to meet are not always used as they are intended to be used, and further that the need in these particular cases may not in fact arise.
64

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Organised demands It is interesting to note that take-up campaigns for lump sum grants, of the kind that were conducted in many areas under the welfare rights banner in the 1970s and 1980s, were not unknown forty years earlier. Most of the boards applicants were likely to be in need of clothing and household equipment but few applied for grants on their own initiative. Exceptional needs payments were, therefore, an obvious target for campaigns by local organisations claiming to represent their interests, many of which came into existence in the 1920s and early 1930s. A Ministry of Labour official, in 1933, identified three distinct groupings. The first and oldest was the communist-dominated NUWM with branches in most parts of the country. The second consisted of local associations affiliated to the National Federation of Unemployed Associations, the first of which was formed around 1931 by the Bristol Trades and Labour Council as a non-communist counter-blast to the NUWM. The TUC, however, refused to recognise the National Federation and in 1932 began organising a third network of unemployed associations. For all these bodies, extracting more money from the unemployment insurance and assistance machinery was a means of attracting and retaining members.
65

The Labour Party also played an active part in some areas. The first local campaign reported was in Maryport, Cumberland, where a large number of applications for blankets and clothing was stimulated by the prospective Labour candidate for the constituency. It was, Eady told Phillips, a difficult situation but the board would not be stampeded to the wholesale distribution of clothes to all applicants who demand them and grants were expected to be made in only a small proportion of cases.
66

Towards the end of 1935 trouble was reported in the Swansea district, involving demands for winter additions as well as lump sum grants. The Bridgend area officer received visits from a representative of the unemployed lodge of the South Wales Miners Federation and two members of the NUWM branch - all communists, according to him requesting information about the pots and pans clause. The next week, the office received 1,086 copies of a letter apparently printed for the NUWM branch: In view of the fact that during the Winter months the needs of my household are increased I therefore make Application for an Extra Allowance of a minimum of 2, which will barely cover the present needs. I find that the present allowance based on the average needs over a long period does not take cognisance of the extra needs arising during the winter months. Therefore, I am making this application for such Extra Allowance on conditions which will not involve an investigation of my ordinary needs.
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At the same time the Swansea district officer reported that 300-400 applications for exceptional needs grants had been received in Swansea and there had been something of a rush of applications at Maesteg and a threat of mass demonstrations at Llanelly in support of demands for extra payments. At Pontypool, by the beginning of January 1936, about 1,000 applications had been received, inspired at least in part by the NUWM, though the area officer thought a fair proportion had resulted from news getting around of the grants being made. The Labour Party reacted with a deputation to the area officer, including the local MP Arthur Jenkins, suggesting that the board should accept from them lists of persons in need, to avoid humiliating visits to bedrooms etc. That suggestion was refused and there were fears of another batch of applications inspired by the Labour Party, to show the NUWM that the latter are not the only people who can get things for applicants.
67 68

The campaign soon spread to north Wales. The Arfon Unemployed Union arranged meetings in a number of places, devoted (the Caernarvon area officer wrote) to an exposition of the Unemployment Assistance Act, to abuse of the Officers of the Board, to references to the salaries of the various Grades of Officers, to an exhortation to trick the Investigating Officers, and to make full use of the Pots and Pans Clause. Leaflets in English and Welsh announced a crusade for grants under the pots and pans clause for new clothes, boots, bedding, kettles, saucepans, etc., and batches of applications were submitted by branches of the union. Its leaders were described by the district officer as a very sinister trio: a school teacher, a partly discredited and therefore disgruntled Methodist Parson and an unemployed and practically unemployable quarryman, J Morgan, who accompanied applicants at interviews at the area office and attended appeal hearings as a friend (representation of appellants was not permitted). The Caernarvon employment exchange manager was asked to do his best to curtail the practically unemployable Morgans free time by fixing him up in a job, which he promised to do. The district officer also ordered that Morgan was to be banned from attending interviews with applicants who were literate and able to follow the officers explanation, and that the clerk of the tribunal was to stop him from making the same sort of speech at every Tribunal.
69

The treatment of mass demands for exceptional needs payments involved two questions. First, must each application be fully investigated and considered on its merits or was some short cut possible? Secondly, must applicants be given the normal opportunity of appealing, with the risk of a spate of time-consuming appeals? To the first question, the special enquiry into clothing needs, already in progress, offered a convenient answer. Applicants were treated as falling within the criteria for the special enquiry, even if they did not, and their needs were investigated during the next normal home visit. The question of appeals was more difficult. Reid argued strongly that the mere lodging of a printed letter applying for a grant should not confer a right of appeal and that officers should avoid issuing written notices of rejection on which appeals could be founded; but he
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eventually agreed that, to avoid trouble with the organisations concerned, a simple written notification should be issued, followed by a formal decision if the applicant was dissatisfied.
70

So far as is known, campaigns of this sort occurred mainly in south Wales and, even there, were not undertaken systematically after the end of 1935. One reason may be that relatively few applications succeeded. In the Swansea district which included Bridgend, Maesteg and Llanelly, according to the boards statistics, only 876 exceptional needs payments were made in 1935 and 446 in 1936. If the figures are even roughly accurate, the number of payments resulting from the campaigns must have been small. In the Newport district, the totals were higher: 3,830 payments in 1935 and 2,246 in 1936, but these probably included a large number of starting work grants. Another reason for the decline in organised demands may have been the boards action in launching its own enquiry into reconditioning needs in 1935-36 and its readiness to meet the clothing needs of South Wales school children in 1937.
71

A small beginning Exceptional needs grants, as table 3 shows, were awarded on a relatively small scale throughout the years 1935-39 (the figures include loans as well as outright grants but, as noted above, the number of loans appears to have been very small). While the total number did not vary much from year to year, the geographical distribution did. Scotland consistently accounted for about a fifth of the total (rather less in 1935 and 1939), roughly in line with the proportion Table 3. Number of exceptional needs grants in England, Wales, Scotland and Great Britain and percentage in each country, 1935-1939 Year England Number 1936 1937 1938 1939 (January-June) % Wales Number % Scotland Great Britain Number % 1,975 16.4 4,433 19.9 4,717 19.7 4,073 20.9 2,251 17.1 Total 12,018 22,250 23,927 19,452 13,140

1935 (August-December)2,30319.2 7,740 64.4 12,962 58.3 4,855 21.8 8,123 33.9 11,087 46.3 9,479 48.7 5,900 30.3 6,969 53.0 3,920 29.8

Sources: AST 7/206, Brief for Minister of Labour, 1938, and J.H. Waddell, Exceptional needs statistics, 17 January 1940. of the boards applicants living in Scotland. England, with about twothirds of the total number of applicants, received much smaller proportions of grants in most years. Wales, with between 13 and 17 per cent of applicants, received a disproportionate share: 64.4 per cent in

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August-December 1935, 21.8 per cent in 1936, 46.3 per cent in 1937 and about 30 per cent in 1938 and 1939. These fluctuations can be accounted for in large part by factors already mentioned. The effect of the special enquiry into reconditioning needs is reflected in the 1935 total for Wales, where it began, and the 1936 total for England, though not for Scotland. At least part of the increased number of grants in Wales in 1937 represents provision for school childrens boots and clothing, while the relatively high proportion of grants in Wales throughout the period was due in part to the prevalence of starting work grants, especially in the Cardiff district, and in part to organised demands, though these occurred mainly in 1935-36. Discounting these special factors, the normal number of grants in the whole of Great Britain seems to have been between 10,000 and 15,000 a year - a very small number considering that throughout the period more than half a million households were receiving weekly allowances from the board. There is little evidence here of the pressures which were to cause very rapid increases in the number of lump sum grants made in the post-war years by the National Assistance Board and the Supplementary Benefits Commission (the annual total was to reach one million by 1976 and nearly five million by 1986). The. boards applicants had not yet come to regard such payments as a normal addition to their allowances, still less as something to which they were entitled. Nor was it common for investigating clerks to use their visits to applicants homes as an opportunity of identifying needs which could be met in this way. Out of nearly 16,000 grants made following domiciliary investigation in the year to June 1939 (excluding starting work grants which did not normally require a home visit), less than 2,000 were for needs to which an investigating clerk had drawn attention.
72

The reaction of the boards officers to unprompted requests for clothing grants is illustrated by the case of a Glasgow man with a wife and three children under four and a weekly allowance, after rent, of 29s.5d., who applied for a grant in June 1938. Now aged 29, he had returned home in poor health on the collapse of the Canadian immigration scheme ten years earlier, had not worked since 1932 and had recently been in hospital with a stomach disorder. Appealing against the refusal of a grant, he wrote: I cant spare to spend money on clothes as I like to keep the family in food. I am walking about with a pair of shoes with holes in them and trousers all torn and pretty well worn, and it is just the same with the rest of the household. My wife is not long after a confinement and her clothes are pretty bad, and she has to get a little extra nourishment. The officers submission to the appeal tribunal was unyielding: No endeavour has been made to provide for necessary replenishments, which were foreseeable, from allowance which is
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considered adequate. ... It was stated at interview that the health of the members of household was good. The tribunal took a more sympathetic view and awarded a grant of 30s. for clothing.
73

Despite the small number of payments under the pots and pans clause, many of the problems associated with lump sum grants in later years were already apparent: the difficulty of justifying payments for needs which the scale rates were intended to cover, confusion between the roles of the board and voluntary bodies in meeting such needs, the intrusive investigation involved, the lack of similar provision for families living on low wages, and the haphazard distribution of grants which depended on local policies and practices, the attitudes of individual officers and the willingness of applicants to ask for such help (which, in turn, depended on the knowledge that it was available). The clause had proved its value when used in a systematic way to meet widespread needs. As an open-ended source of discretionary grants, it remained problematic, if largely unexplored.

Reinventing the dole: a history of the Unemployment Assistance Board 1934-1940 by Tony Lynes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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