Middle-class attitudes to poverty and welfare in post-famine Ireland

Abstract

Recent analyses of the evolution of welfare systems across Europe have explored the role of ideology, class and gender in shaping attitudes to, and structures of, welfare provision.1 It is generally agreed that the middle classes were central not only to the production of welfare but also to the dominance throughout most of the nineteenth century of a concept of social relations based on individualism. In most cases, it was not until the early decades of the twentieth century, under the pressure of economic recession, class conflict and international rivalry, that the non-interventionist, individualist state began to give way to the collectivist welfare state. While progress towards the creation of a ‘classic’ welfare state was to stall in Ireland after independence, the future shape of welfare provision was the subject of ongoing debate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the poor law system in general and with the institution of the workhouse in particular. Amongst those campaigning for reform of the poor law were welfare reformers who regarded it as inefficient and inhumane, Catholic clerics who condemned it as a foreign imposition unsuited to Irish circumstances and culture, and nationalists who rejected it as an unwanted by-product of British rule. Through an examination of the divergent roots of this dissatisfaction, this chapter reveals the complex interplay of class, religion, gender and politics in attitudes to poor relief, and the fractured nature of middle-class identity.