Britain's Labour Party First Came to Power on Welfare Policy: Taking Housing Policy for Example

Abstract

In 1924, the British Labour Party, which was based on the working class, first came to power. Faced with the miserable conditions of the British working class after the First World War, the British Labour Party implemented a series of social welfare policies with socialism as its goal. The most far-reaching of these was Labour's housing policy, the Wheatley Housing Act. This policy continued after the fall of Labour and into the Great Depression. This policy effectively solved the housing problem in British society at that time, alleviating the social contradictions in the UK, and setting a good example for other countries to solve the housing problem in the process of industrialization. This paper uses literature analysis to analyze the Wheatley House Act from the aspects of background, content, and function and finally comes to the conclusion that the Act increases the number of people employed in the construction industry by modifying the term of life, and provides more rental houses for the proletariat by restricting the right of homeowners to dispose of houses. This kind of policy is a good embodiment of the "social organism" social ideology of the Labour leader MacDonald in the 1920s.