WELCOME
to the
State Pension Centenary
Campaign website

published by the
National Pensioners Convention

Before the Old Age Pensions Act was passed in 1908, those who could no longer earn their living due to the fragility of age, depended wholly upon charity to survive. 

It took ten years of campaigning by liberal reformers, non-conformists, and above all, trade unionists, to win the older people’s right to an income that would abolish the spectre of dying in the workhouse.

The 1908 Pensions Act signalled the state’s first step in providing for old age.  It was a means-tested, non-contributory state pension of 5 shillings a week for men and women aged 70 and over and by any measure, it was an advance of social policy that would eventually lay the foundations for the creation of the National Insurance system and the welfare state.

But the Victorians believed that an old age pension should only be for the ‘deserving’ poor - an idea which still exists today.

This website gives a brief history of the events that started it all and the ongoing campaign for an adequate universal basic state pension that abolishes the means-test; still imposed on millions whose lifetime’s work and service have created today’s national prosperity.