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| 1902 |
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| The Education Act placed full responsibility for education in the hands of the state, replaced local school boards by the authority of local government, and systematized standards and secondary schools. It did maintain voluntary religious education. | 1 |
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| 1903 |
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| The Women's Social and Political Union was organized by Emmeline Pankhurst, to launch attention-grabbing tactics to win the vote. | 2 |
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| 1904 |
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| The Licensing Act, recommended by Balfour in the interest of the temperance vote, was passed but also lost him much support. The act closed some of the public houses but compensated their owners out of the licensing fees paid by the remainder of the houses. Temperance crusaders saw this provision as the government's condoning of evil activity. | 3 |
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| 1906 |
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| The Plural Voting Bill eliminated the right to vote more than once even if the voter had more than one landholding. | 4 |
| The Trades Disputes Act reversed the Taff-Vale decision by removing the unions' liability for acts of its agents or members. | 5 |
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| 1909 |
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| The People's Budget, presented by Lloyd George, became the vehicle for major parliamentary reform. It proposed to pay for the new social programs with a surtax on incomes over £5,000, a small duty on undeveloped land, and a tax of 20 percent on capital gains in land value. The Lords refused to pass this budget initially. After two elections, and a threat from the new king, George V, to pack the Lords with new peers, the Lords approved a bill that allowed money bills to be passed without the Lords' consent. This law also commuted the Lords' veto on other bills into the right only to delay a bill. | 6 |
| Social legislation. Free school meals (1906) and medical services (1907) were made available to poor children, and secondary schools were required to keep a quarter of their places available for state elementary school students. In 1908, the Children's Act sought to alleviate cruelty and neglect as well as revising reformatories. | 7 |
| Insurance. The Old Age Pension Act (1909) and the National Insurance Act (1911) that followed provided for unemployment and health insurance and for retirement benefits. The National Insurance Act was modeled after the German law of 1889 and was a contributory scheme. | 8 |
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| 1910–12 |
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| Great national strikes by miners, railway workers, transport workers (the “Triple Alliance,” 1913), and others attacked various grievances, and along with growing feminist agitation for the vote, frightened many politicians. Suffragist demonstrations became increasingly militant, with arson first used in 1910. (See Great Britain) | 9 |
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