Having begun as a highly conservative movement, initially dedicated to a tightening-up of the Poor Law and then encompassing industrial concerns about the alleged inefficiency of the ‘worn-out’ worker, the campaign for old age pensions took a very different turn in the 1890s. It became the central demand of the British labour movement's social programme, and part of a wider socialist strategy for redistributing wealth through welfare policies. After growing interest shown by the Independent Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress in the 1890s, the socialist demand for pensions was expressed in the 1900s through the ‘National Committee of Organised Labour for Promoting Old Age Pensions For All’ (NCOL). This organisation was the principal pressure group that brought about the 1908 Old Age Pensions Act. The role of the organised labour movement was crucial, especially in ensuring that the 1908 scheme was non-contributory.

Socialism and old age pensions

After its hesitant beginnings, socialism in Britain came of age in the 1890s with the formation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1893. What distinguished the ILP was its commitment to a clearly denned socialist programme that would redistribute wealth to the working class. The ‘social’ programme passed at the inaugural conference (at Bradford, on 13 and 14 January 1893) demanded: the abolition of overtime, piecework and child labour; a maximum eighthour day in all trades and industries; provision for the sick, disabled, widows and orphans (to which was added in the following year ‘the necessary funds to be obtained by a tax upon unearned incomes’); and collective ownership of the land and all means of production, distribution and exchange.