Welfare Policy in Britain: The Road from 1945

238 Pages·1999·23.103 MB·English

by  Helen Fawcett, Rodney Lowe (eds.)

WELFARE POLICY IN BRITAIN
THE ROAD FROM 1945
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY IN CONTEXT
Published in association with the Institute of Contemporary British History
General Editor: Peter Catterall, Director, Institute of Contemporary British
History
Titles include:
Oliver Bange
THE EEC CRISIS OF 1963: Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in
Conflict
Christopher Brady
UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS CAMBODIA, 1977-92
Peter Catterall and Sean McDougall (editors)
THE NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION IN BRITISH POLITICS
Helen Fawcett and Rodney Lowe (editors)
WELFARE POLICY IN BRITAIN: The Road from 1945
Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah (editors)
THE MYTH OF CONSENSUS: New Views on British History, 1945--64
Wolfram Kaiser
USING EUROPE, ABUSING THE EUROPEANS: Britain and European
Integration, 1945-63
Spencer Mawby
CONTAINING GERMANY: Britain and the Arming of the Federal Republic
Jeffrey Pickering
BRITAIN'S WITHDRAWAL FROM EAST OF SUEZ: The Politics of
Retrenchment
L.v. Scott
MACMILLAN, KENNEDY AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: Political,
Military and Intelligence Aspects
Paul Sharp
THATCHER'S DIPLOMACY: The Revival of British Foreign Policy
Contemporary History in Context
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Welfare Policy
in Britain
The Road from 1945
Edited by
Helen Fawcett
Jean Monnet Fellow and Lecturer in European Public Policy
University of Strathclyde
and
Rodney Lowe
Professor of Contemporary History
University of Bristol
in association with
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
ICBH
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-27324-9 ISBN 978-1-349-27322-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27322-5
First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21954-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Welfare policy in Britain: the road from 1945 I edited by Helen
Fawcett and Rodney Lowe.
p. cm. - (Contemporary history in context series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21954-3 (cloth)
I. Public welfare-Government policy-Great Britain. 2. Great
Britain-Social policy. 3. Great Britain-Economic policy-1945-
4. Great Britain-Politics and government-1945- I. Fawcett,
Helen. II. Lowe, Rodney. III. Series.
HV245.W46 1999
361.941'09'045-dc21 98-47548
CIP
Selection and editorial matter © Helen Fawcett and Rodney Lowe 1999
General Editor's Preface © Peter Catterall 1999
Chapter I © Rodney Lowe 1999
Chapter 8 © Helen Fawcett 1999
Chapters 2-7, 9-10 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1999
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1999 978-0-333-67513-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
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accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
109876543 2 I
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vi
General Editor's Preface viii
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: The Road from 1945 1
Rodney Lowe
2 Inequality, Redistribution and Living Standards in
Britain since 1945 18
Paul Johnson
3 Renegotiating the Boundaries: Risk and
Responsibility in Personal Welfare since 1945 34
David Gladstone
4 The Voluntary Sector and the State in Twentieth
Century Britain 52
Jane Lewis
5 From 'Problem Family' to 'Underclass', 1945-95 69
John Macnicol
6 Democratic Socialism and Equality 94
Lord Plant
7 The National Assistance Board and the 'Rediscovery'
of Poverty 116
John Veit-Wilson
8 Jack Jones, the Social Contract and Social Policy
1970-4 158
Helen Fawcett
9 Immigration and Economics: The Politics of Race in
the Postwar Period 184
Shamit Saggar
10 The Welfare State: From Beveridge to Borrie 208
Chris Pierson
Index 225
v
Notes on the Contributors
Helen Fawcett is Jean Monnet Fellow and Lecturer in European Public
Policy at the University of Strathclyde. She was previously University
Lecturer in European Studies at the University of Oxford and Visiting
Scholar at the Center for European Studies at the University of
Harvard. She has published on the theory of welfare state regimes, the
impact of social democracy on welfare provision, state pension policy
and unemployment arrangements in the European Union, and the
development of the 'social dimension' in Europe.
David Gladstone previously worked in the Scottish Office and at the
University of Exeter before moving to the University of Bristol where
he is currently director of undergraduate programmes in Social Policy.
His research and teaching interests are in nineteenth and twentieth
century social policy. He is editor of British Social Welfare: Past,
Present and Future (1995) and of Pioneers in Social Welfare, a major
reprint from primary sources (1995-9). In addition, he has published a
considerable number of articles, chapters in edited collections and
reports on welfare past and present, and has held several visiting
appointments especially in the USA.
Jane Lewis is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Nottingham,
having held similar posts at the London School of Economics and the
University of Oxford. She has written extensively on the history of
welfare policy as well as current practice in Britain and Europe, with a
particular emphasis on gender issues. Amongst her latest publications
are The Voluntary Sector, the State and Social Work in Britain (1995);
with H. Glennerster, Implementing Community Care (1996); and, with
K. Kiernan and H. Land, Lone Motherhood in Twentieth Century
Britain (1998)
Rodney Lowe is Professor of Contemporary History at the University
of Bristol. He is the author of The Welfare State in Britain since 1945
(1998) and has published widely on twentieth-century welfare history.
Paul Johnson is Reader in Economic History at the London School of
Economics and Political Science. He has written widely on the history
of the welfare state, retirement and living standards, and is editor of
Twentieth Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (1994).
vi
Notes on the Contributors vii
John Macnicol is Reader in Social Policy at Royal Holloway,
University of London. He has published widely in the history of social
policy, and is currently researching the history of the 'underclass' idea,
and of old age, retirement and state pensions. His latest book is The
Politics of Retirement, 1878-1948 (1998).
Lord Plant is Master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and was previ
ously Professor of Politics at Southampton University. He is a Labour
peer and has published eight books on political theory.
Chris Pierson is Professor of Politics at the University of Nottingham.
His work focuses upon the reform of welfare states and more general
problems of social democratic governance. His most recent publica
tions include Socialism After Commission: The New Market Socialism
(1995) and The Modem State (1996).
Shami t Saggar is Senior Lecturer in Government at Queen Mary and
Westfield College, London. His books include Race and Public Policy
(1991) and Race and Politics in Britain (1992).
John Veit-Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the
University of Northumbria and Visiting Professor in the Department
of Social Policy at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A member
of the Abel-Smith and Townsend poverty research team in the 1960s,
his principal research interests since then have focused on concepts of
poverty and minimum human needs. He is currently working on a ten
country study of Government Minimum Income Standards.
General Editor's Preface
In 1910, in a lecture to the Royal Statistical Society, Lord George
Hamilton complained: 'We, the richest nation in Europe, have the
heaviest pauperism, yet the more we spend the worse the position
seems to be.'! Britain is certainly no longer the richest nation in
Europe. But it is ending the century with all parties uncomfortably
aware of the rising cost of welfare. This in itself is not a new aspect of
the post-war years; concern about the cost of the welfare state has
been a recurring theme throughout its history. To this, however, has
been added growing doubts about the efficacy of that spending. This
problem has proved a major factor in the increasing willingness shown
in recent years to question aspects of the state welfarism which
emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, and to shift its
focus.
The 1940s in contrast marked the culmination of a long-term trend
towards growing faith in the state as the key provider of solutions to
social problems. Unemployment, cyclical in the late nineteenth
century and mass during the inter-war years, was one key factor in this
process. The labour market policy of the Poor Law, the deterrent
effect of less eligibility, was, as Hamilton recognised, a failure in
addressing this. And the particular problem to which he drew atten
tion was the consequent ineffectiveness of Poor Law expenditure.
Instead, the operation of the Poor Law was largely remedial.
Alongside it, however, the state was in contrast from the 1880s
increasingly portrayed as ameliorative, able to intervene to promote
social welfare and important corollaries such as national efficiency.
The perceived fiscal constraints upon the state nevertheless acted to
slow its advance into social policy before 1945. Nor was there much
agreement, at this time, even within the parties, over exactly what
form that intervention should take. For instance, at various times ele
ments within the labour movement favoured action through industrial
restructuring or through municipalisation, rather than through the
central government route essentially adopted by the Attlee
Government. There was nothing preordained about the character of
the Welfare State that then emerged.
If, nevertheless, the Attlee Government decided the form of the
Welfare State, what was the Welfare State then set up actually for?
viii
General Editor's Preface ix
Some New Liberals had been tutored by the idealism of T. H. Green
to see state action as a means of advancing liberty for those con
strained by the limitations of laissez-faire capitalism. Many early
socialists similarly saw state action as necessary for the advancement
of liberty and personal fulfillment. As one recollected in 1956:
We would be wise to remind ourselves that the pioneers of the
Movement sought what is now called the Welfare State not as an
end in itself but as a means of providing people with opportunities
for greater happiness.2
The question was how: through the eradication of hardship and
poverty, the promotion of social equality, the encouragement of active
citizenship, the use of social policy as a supply side measure? There
were elements of all these objectives in the 1940s, even if some, not
least citizenship, were less conspicuous in the thinking behind the
eventual Attlee legislation. But not all of them featured in all the leg
islation; indeed some, such as social equality, were clearly felt to be
neglected by the left in, for instance, the implementation of the 1944
Education Act. There was thus no one theme to the Welfare State,
and certainly not as it developed in ensuing years.
The complexity of the post-war British welfare state is reflected in
the various contributions to this volume in the Contemporary
History in Context series. The work of the Institute of Contemporary
British History, the progenitor of this series, is to promote awareness
of the nature of the recent past. This it does through its various edu
cational publications and activities, through its support for archival
deposition and its involvement in the collection of oral archives and,
as in this book, through the encouragement of new research. All of
the essays that follow present new findings and several draw heavily
on previously untrawled material from the Public Record Office or
elsewhere. In the process they all also highlight the way in which
thinking about social policy in post-war Britain has addressed one
or other of the range of objectives mentioned above. Different chap
ters examine the debates taking place in particular policy areas
within Whitehall, the political parties, the trade union movement or
the voluntary sector. Their interest lies not only in the stages of
development in thinking about social policy which they examine, and
their clarification of the policy process within these various bodies.
They also cast light upon the criteria on which that thinking was