| This dissertation examines British friendly societies primarily through the lens of the local records, shedding light on three issues of contemporary relevance: the nature of Victorian class-consciousness, the organization of community institutions, and the effectiveness of cooperative social welfare.;Friendly societies have usually been seen as exemplars of mid-Victorian stability. However, they were most significant in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods. A revised membership estimate shows that in both absolute and relative terms, the societies achieved their greatest popularity in the 1890s and 1900s.;From the perspective of the local neighborhood, friendly societies represented a creative response to industrialization. Their records reveal that friendly societies provided the chief social outlet for many men and a means to encourage cooperation and voluntarism. Different types of friendly societies flourished in the disparate communities upon which Britain's industrial economy depended for its labor, but all shared a mutualist orientation, providing a restraint on the growth of oppositional class consciousness. Their ethic accepted an economy led by factory and land owners but stressed a mutualist distribution of pooled resources in order to help those most in need. Their mutualist ideals were best suited to areas of Northern England dominated by factory production.;Within the context of the local industrial community, friendly societies achieved much of value to their members, but they failed to conquer several long-standing problems. They never adapted mutual aid to 20th century social conditions. Leaders' mutualist doctrines hardened into reflexive patterns of thought emphasizing self-help and working class "independence." As the rhetoric of class conflict became more widespread, friendly societies' mutualist orientation looked increasingly out of date. Among the rank and file, attitudes favoring voluntary mutual aid lost favor to the idea of state provision.;The friendly society movement died a slow death. The movement's leaders were ill-prepared to defend their principles when the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act and 1911 National Insurance Act circumscribed their role. In 1946, they found themselves completely unable to counter the Attlee government's plan to eliminate their role as "approved" insurance providers under the National Insurance Act, and they faded into near irrelevance thereafter. |
