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Sandwiched between the Parliament Act and the Home Rule Act, the National Insurance Act 191 1 is easily overlooked and often forgotten. Yet, as Gilbert has pointed out,1 it was critical both of itself and as the foundation for social legislation up to current times. It came into force on 15 July 1912 when contributions began to be collected and full operation from January 1913, almost exactly one hundred years ago. Introduced by a radical Liberal government to safeguard the most vulnerable from the poverty and despair that unemployment and sickness could bring, they were not the first to judge existing mechanisms degrading and ineffective. The churches and others thought it their charitable duty to dispense alms to offset the worst effects, and had been doing so for hundreds of years without any appreciable effect on the numbers requiring help, while the Poor Law was similarly reactive and particularly hated. It was intended as a last resort and most people sought to avoid this detested form of welfare if they could. Better-off individuals had been encouraged to take personal responsibility, through insuring themselves, thrift or by joining Friendly Societies, slate clubs and other variants of mutual protection. This still left millions without any form of safety net and in the governments view it was society's responsibility to provide this.
The National Insurance Act is closely identified with the reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George (1863-1945) who steered it through, piloting it between the institutions and organisations whose interests it threatened. These included: the insurance companies and Friendly Societies who considered the government to be encroaching on their area, putting their future profits, indeed the viability of their business, at risk; the individual insurance agents who collected weekly premiums and depended on generating new business to make a living; the doctors and the British Medical Association (BMA) who thought State intervention a threat to their autonomy and profitable practice. More trivially - and much later - individual homeowners protested against the expectation that they should stamp the cards of their domestic servants. If David Lloyd George was the only person who had the political skills and sleight of hand to navigate this turbulent route, and the determination to see it through, successful enactment...