The mixed economy of welfare in historical context

Abstract

It is a cliché, but a truism, that historical analyses reflect the times in which they are produced. This is as true of writing about the history of social welfare as any other form of historical enquiry. Much of the material produced during the era of the ‘classic welfare state’, that is from the end of the Second World War down to the early 1970s (Lowe, 2005), consequently focused almost exclusively on the role of the state. Texts such as those by Bruce (1961) and Fraser (1973) told, in a ‘Whig’ version of welfare history, a story of almost constant progress and achievement, the realisation of the post-war settlement and the attainment by Britons of ‘social’ rights and citizenship. The last was, of course, famously articulated by T.H. Marshall (1950). For the most part, then, there was in these accounts little attention to forms of provision, or influence, which did not centre on state activities, and predominantly those of the central state. However, even before the upheavals of the 1970s and subsequent decades there were signs that this narrative was problematic. Richard Titmuss, Britain’s leading authority on social policy from the 1950s until his death in 1973, constantly challenged the idea that the ‘welfare state’ was a complete or finished product, one reason he always put the phrase in inverted commas (Titmuss, 1958). The ‘rediscovery of poverty’ of the 1960s suggested that all was not well with state provision of welfare and hence that the history of the ‘welfare state’ was not one of unequivocal progress.