Urban History, 25,3 (1998) © 1998 Cambridge University Press Printed in the United Kingdom Mutual aid and civil society: friendly societies in nineteenth- century Bristol MARTIN GORSKY* Dept of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE ABSTRACT: Recent work on 'civil society' has made claims for the past capacity of mutual aid associations to generate 'social capital': self-help, trust, solidarity. Friendly societies in nineteenth-century Bristol are examined to test these claims. Their origins and growth are explored, as well as their membership and social, convivial and medical roles. Solidarities of class and neighbourhood are set against evidence of exclusion and division. Trust and close personal ties proved insufficient to avert the actuarial risks that threatened financial security. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nineteenth-century friendly society in the light of the revival of interest in the concept of civil society. Although the precise meaning of 'civil society' varies in the hands of different writers, the usage understood here is the notion of a sphere of activity distinct from the public arena of the state and the private world of the family.1 It is somewhere in which spontaneous participation occurs and public opinion is formed, and refers most typically to voluntary associations such as clubs, trade unions, professional and cultural organizations and mutual aid societies. The proposition that a healthy state needs a robust civil society was most famously made by de Tocqueville: 'In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all others'.2 This has become newly pertinent to political scientists considering how viable democracies are to be established in post- communist Europe.3 De Tocqueville also argued for the superiority of private association to government on the grounds of its beneficial effect An early version of this article was presented at the Urban History Group Conference, Brighton, 1997, and I thank participants for their comments. I am also grateful to John Mohan for his advice. 1 E. Meehan, Civil Society (Swindon, 1995); J.L. Cohen and A. Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (London, 1992), chs 1,2; J. Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (London, 1988), ch. 2. 2 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. G. Lawrence (London, 1988 edn), vol. 2, part II, chs 5,7, quotation 517. 3 J. Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London, 1988), 2-5, part 3; A. Agh, 'Citizenship and civil society in Central Europe', in B. van Steenbergen (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship (London, 1994), 108-26. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Open University Library, on 05 Feb 2017 at 22:07:20, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926800012931 Friendly societies in Bristol 303 on individual character: 'Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed only by the reciprocal action of men one upon another'.4 This aspect of civil society is invoked in critiques of contemporary welfare arrangements which warn of the social and financial costs of public provision delivered by a strong state.5 The right has emphasized the transfer of power back to civil society through marketization and self-help - the empowerment of parents and governors in education policy for example.6 Thinkers of the left also favour more active citizen involvement in social welfare, pointing both to the practical achievement of grass-roots self-help initiatives, and to a theoretical antecedent in the tradition of guild socialism.7 The example of the friendly society, or benefit club, the characteristic social insurance organization of the nineteenth century, offers an opportunity to consider these claims for the importance of civil society. Two writers have already reviewed the history of mutual aid in these terms. Robert Putnam has analysed the ingredients of successful democ- racy through the study of post-war local government in Italy, contrasting the effectiveness of the north to the less satisfactory performance of regional administrations in the south.8 The distinction is explained in terms of the north's more vigorous tradition of 'civic community', here understood principally in terms of the historic 'vibrancy of associational life'.9 Central to this tradition were mutual aid clubs. They fostered trust and reciprocity between members, dependent upon the honesty of each other to safeguard the common benefit fund, and their participatory aspects stimulated many to become involved in political parties. In the south, however, the 'social capital' which these associations promoted to the benefit of society at large was absent as landlord patronage impeded their growth.10 A similarly favourable verdict on the legacy of English friendly societies has been given by David Green, who argues that they demonstrate the viability of a welfare system without an over-mighty state. Green suggests that they actively engendered an ethic of self-help and individualism, motivating members to become independent of the statutory Poor Law, that their coverage was far more extensive than has been supposed hitherto, and that they imposed a market discipline on 4 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 515. 5 P. Rosanvallon, 'The decline of social visibility', in Keane, Civil Society, 199-220. 6 Meehan, Civil Society, 7-9; Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 11-15. 7 The Commission on Social Justice, Social justice: Strategies for National Renewal (London, 1994), 306-10; P. Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Oxford, 1994); see also S. Yeo, 'Working-class association, private capital, welfare and the state in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries', in N. Parry et al. (ed.), Social Work, Welfare and the State (London, 1979). 8 R.D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modem Italy (Princeton, 1993); idem, "The prosperous community: social capital and public life', The American Prospect (Spring 1993), 35-42. 9 Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 91. 10 Ibid., 139-41,144-5. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Open University Library, on 05 Feb 2017 at 22:07:20, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926800012931 304 Urban History the cost of medical care by employing doctors on renewable contracts.11 This argument, for a 'reinvention of civil society' based on historical precedent, in which citizens take charge of their own welfare in a manner that obviates fraud and dependency, has a wide appeal. It is a feature not only of New Right rhetoric, but also of communitarian thought with its stress on the role of associations in engendering duty and civic responsibility.12 Victorian mutual aid has also been specifically invoked by some sections of the left in support of proposals for secondary pensions administered by stakeholder corporations.13 The claim then is that friendly societies benefited society not simply as insurers, but as associations. They fostered social capital by encouraging solidarity between members, they promoted civic engagement and acted as nurseries of democracy, and they cultivated an attitude to social welfare founded on independence and self-help. To explore these ideas this article will consider the friendly society movement in the context of a nineteenth-century provincial city. Bristol is offered as a suitable case study: it was one of Britain's largest cities with around 400 known friendly societies formed in the course of the century, its mixed economy meant that no single industrial sector dominated, and it had a rich tradition of clubbing which allows mutual aid organizations to be placed in the context of early modern forerunners. The first section will draw a distinc- tion between friendly societies and other types of association which constituted civil society from the late eighteenth century, pointing to their procedural origins in the trade guilds and the influence of legislation on their development. The second part considers the role of the benefit clubs in the public life of the city, pointing both to their insurance activities and their physical presence as foci of conviviality and urban ritual. Finally the issues of membership solidarity and political life are discussed and an agnostic position is adopted to the characterization of friendly societies as repositories of social capital and lynchpins of the good society. Instead renewed emphasis is placed on their primary significance as pioneers of sickness insurance, and it is argued that the pressures they faced in tackling social risk created a powerful tendency towards increased bureaucratization and centralization throughout the period. 11 D.G. Green, Working Class Patients and the Medical Establishment (Aldershot, 1985); idem, Re-inventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics (London, 1993). 12 Keith Joseph, 'Why the Tories are the real party of the stakeholder', Daily Telegraph, 12 Jan. 1996; David Willetts MP, 'A buccaneer nation dares to be different', Sunday Times, 25 Aug. 1996; A. Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Commu- nitarian Agenda (London, 1993), chs 4 and 5, 248, 259-60; W.M. Sullivan, 'Institutions as the infrastructure of democracy', in A. Etzioni (ed.), New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions and Communitiers (Chapel Hill, 1995), 170-80; see also D. Selboume, The Principle of Duty: An Essay on the Foundations of the Civic Order (London, 1994), ch. 10; R. Bellah et al.. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (San Francisco, 1985). 13 F. Field, Making Welfare Work: Reconstructing Welfare for the Millenium (London, 1995), esp. 124-6. Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Open University Library, on 05 Feb 2017 at 22:07:20, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.