982 Ch. 24 • The Elusive Search for Stability in the 1920s
contrast, the British Communist Party, founded in 1920 and repudiated by
the Labour Party, never attracted more than a few thousand followers.
Reformism dominated the parties of the left in post-war Europe. The Ger
man Social Democratic Party and the French Socialist Party participated in
parliamentary alliances that underlay, respectively, the Weimar Republic and
French moderate center-left governments. The British Labour Party, closely
allied with the trade unions, emerged as the second largest party in Britain
after the war. All three parties depended, to a large extent, on the support of
the reformist labor movements in their respective countries. In some ways,
unions had become interest groups like any other, bargaining with govern
ments and employers. To this extent, the Communist critics of union
reformism may have been correct when they warned that reformism served
to integrate workers into the structure of the capitalist state.
The emerging outlines of the welfare state in the 1920s reflected the pres
sure of the parties of the left and of trade unions. At the same time, the ori
gins of the welfare state must be seen in the context of earlier programs of
social reform adopted in most countries in the decades before the Great War
(see Chapter 20). While the Communist parties of Europe espoused, at least
in principle, working-class revolution, socialists and most union members
demanded that states provide certain minimum protection for workers. Scan
dinavia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway evolved into social democra
cies, implementing pathbreaking social services. The socialist municipal
government of Vienna constructed an attractive working-class apartment
complex that provided communal facilities such as laundries, bathhouses, and
kindergartens.
In Britain, Prime Minister Lloyd George had promised demobilized sol
diers “a country fit for heroes to live in.” The reality was considerably less
grand. However, pressured by the Labour Party, which now held the second
largest number of seats in the House of Commons, the Housing and Town
Planning Act of 1919 provided town councils with subsidies to encourage
the construction of cheap row houses. This eliminated some slum over
crowding and provided many working-class families with centralized heat
ing and bathrooms. Within old city limits, “council” flats paid for by town
councils provided more modest lodgings for some of the poorest workers. In
1920, the British government expanded unemployment insurance coverage
to include most industrial workers, and in 1925, Parliament granted pen
sions to war widows and orphans, major steps in the emergence of the
British welfare state. In France, the Chamber of Deputies in 1930 provided
insurance for 10 million workers.
Political InstabilityIn October 1919, Italian Prime Minister Orlando reflected the uncertainty
prevalent in the immediate post-war period when he stated that the growing