Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970

Abstract

Abstract In the mid-twentieth century the social sciences significantly expanded, and played a major role in shaping British intellectual, political, and cultural life. Central to this shift was the left-wing policy maker and sociologist Michael Young. In the 1940s Young was a key architect of the Labour Party’s 1945 election manifesto, Let Us Face the Future. He became a sociologist in the 1950s, publishing a classic study of the London working class, Family and Kinship in East London, with Peter Willmott in 1957, and the 1958 dystopian satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, about a future society in which status was determined entirely by intelligence. Young also founded dozens of organizations, including the Institute of Community Studies, the Consumers’ Association, and the Open University. Moving between politics, academia, and activism, Young believed that the social sciences could help policy makers and politicians understand human nature and build better social and political institutions. This book examines the relationship between social science and public policy in left-wing politics between the end of the Second World War and the end of the first Wilson government through the figure of Michael Young. It shows how Young and other researchers and policy makers challenged Labour values like full employment and nationalization, and argued that the Labour Party should put more emphasis on relationships, family, and community. Showing that the social sciences were embedded in the politics of the post-war left, this book argues that historians and scholars should take their role in British politics and political thought seriously.