| From the families of dockside London to the cautious cabinets of the Edwardian 'new liberals,' the search was on, after 1889, for a class of men Charles Booth characterized as so low in moral character as to require elimination from society-at-large. Responding as best they could, the poorest third of England's workers attempted desperately, yet usually failed, to avoid the stigma of the 'loafer' as they weathered economic downturn, increased policing, the fallout of deskilling, and the hatred and hysteria of a society, particularly in the wake of the Boer War, that refused them the status even of 'men'. In laws and literature, England's reforming and governing classes found their answers in Idealism, a philosophical movement taking progressive, moderate and labour leaders under its fold, and encouraging an understanding of poverty, and responses to it, on the basis of character alone. Piecemeal programmes and partial remedies for a host of principally urban, predominantly working-class social problems were the result, and they point---in a period of ostensibly 'progressive' housing and unemployment reform---to a disturbing, quasi-authoritarian policy demanding nothing less than social apartheid. |
