Voluntary action in the ‘welfare state’: the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child

Abstract

As state involvement in the provision of social and medical welfare grew during the twentieth-century, it was often seen as antagonistic to the work of voluntary associations which had pioneered many different types of welfare provision. Pat Thane argues that such assumptions are a false dichotomy and develops a case study of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (NCUM), founded in 1918, as a means through which to assess the changing landscape of twentieth-century social welfare and the relationship between voluntary action and public sector welfare. The work of organizations like the NCUM actually intensified with the growth of state welfare provision from the inter-war years onwards; a pattern which was duplicated across the welfare sector more generally Thane contests political arguments that the ‘big society’ should replace the supposed ‘stranglehold’ of state welfare by highlighting the extent to which the historical relationship between voluntary associations and the state has actually been creative and mutually sustaining.