The Beveridge Report: Its Origins and Outcomes - Case Study Example

The Beveridge Report (1942) Introduction In May 1940 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned when it was obvious his policy of appeasement had failed and the King asked Winston Churchill to form a government with the support of all parties in Parliament. Churchill accepted and formed a coalition government that included Ministers from the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party that Churchill was a member of. (Jenkins, 2002, 507) In the summer of 1940 the new Prime Minister told the United Kingdom that they were engaged in a peoples war: “The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere.” (Calder, 1969, 20) For these reasons Marxist historian Angus Calder refers to the Second World War as The Peoples War. Accompanying this national effort a sense grew in the population that this peoples war demanding sacrifices from the entire population should also offer rewards to all the people. According to Calder the British people, particularly Liberals and Socialists, began to see this war not as a war against only foreign fascism but a war against class divisions and the strict class divisions within British society. (Calder, 1969, 159) In the context of social services and public policy Francis G Castles concurs. He notes that the extraordinary military efforts demanded of the population of Great Britain “required a promise of better things to come; of guns being replaced by butter, or in the words of the Atlantic Charter agreed to by the Allies in 1941, their war aims should include improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security as well as freedom from fear and want.” (Castles, 2010, 95) One of the outcomes of this development was the appointment of economist Sir William Beveridge as Chairman of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services by the Minister without Portfolio responsible for reconstruction in June 1941. The Committee delivered its report in November 1942 and it is commonly known as the Beveridge Report. The Beveridge Report While the long term impact of the Beveridge Report remains to be considered in the next section of this discussion it is universally acclaimed as a landmark document in the history of social services. Interestingly, it was known within government that it would be revolutionary in nature and Beveridge was ordered to preface the Report with a statement claiming sole authorship of the document, allowing the government to distance itself from the Report. The Minister without Portfolio, on January 27, 1942 wrote to Beveridge, “The Report, when made, will be your own report; it will be signed by you alone, and the departmental representatives will not be associated in any way with the views and recommendations on questions of policy which it contains.” (Included as a Preface to Beveridge, 1942) Its revolutionary nature is evident from the documents first sections that quite stirringly outline the three guiding principles of the report: 7.The first principle is that any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching. 8. The second principle is that organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. 9. The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility ; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family. (Beveridge, 1942) Simply put, the Report proposed a revolutionary change in attacking Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness, guaranteeing security in exchange for service and contribution. Moving to practicalities the Report asserted that “abolition of want requires a double re-distribution of income, through social insurance and by family needs [also defined as childrens allowances].” Further the amount paid out by social insurance and childrens allowances had to be adequate to maintain the entire family above subsistence level: Subsistence level being scientifically determined by social surveys and in no way related to any other measures such as prior earnings or means testing. Further, the Report took particular note of the poverty of many older Britons: “Briefly, the proposal is to introduce for all citizens adequate pensions without means test by stages over a transition period of twenty years, while providing immediate assistance pensions for persons requiring them.” (Beveridge, 1942) The Report divided the population into six categories and gave consideration to each: 1. Employees, that is, persons whose normal occupation is employment under contract of service. 2. Others gainfully occupied, including employers, traders and independent workers of all kinds. 3. Housewives, that is married women of working age. 4. Others of working age not gainfully occupied. 5. Below working age. 6. Retired above working age. Retired above working age (6.) were to be covered by pensions. Children below working age (5.) were to be covered by childrens allowances. Categories 1, 2 and 4 were to be covered by unemployment insurance (this included single women). The Report proposed that, “Unemployment benefit will continue at the same rate without means test so long as unemployment lasts, but will normally be subject to a condition of attendance at a work or training centre after a certain period.” (Beveridge, 1942) Importantly, unemployment insurance was not time limited and did not involve a means test of any kind. Housewives were given unique consideration. In that they were considered in the context of the family unit. This left them in an anomalous position accounted for only by inclusion in the sense of a family allowance, in the context of their male spouse. Jane Lewis, while not blind to the weaknesses in Beveridges approach – weaknesses that became more pronounced in the fifty years after the report was first issued – acknowledges that Beveridge attempted to wrestle with the issues around the rights and roles of women and in so doing took a revolutionary approach even if his practical proposals for wives engaged in household labour were inadequate. (Lewis, 1998, 259-265) The Impact Fifty years after the war, Avis Hutt, a nurse in London during the Battle of Britain and the later V-1 and V-2 attacks still recalled the publication of the Beveridge Report as one of her most significant memories: Another abiding memory is the publication of the Beveridge report on November 20 1942. I still have my original copy, printed on flimsy wartime paper and published by HMSO, price two shillings (now ten pence). I vividly remember the excitement of reading those inspiring words which set out a Plan for Social Security for the future. In the blackout and with destruction all around London it read Like a morality play: it is an attack upon Want ... one of five giants on the road to reconstruction ... the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. (“Memories of War”) Clearly, the Beveridge Report had a profound impact on Britons when it was initially released. Historians such as Bryan D Palmer trace a relatively straight line forward from “the sociological aftermath of the 1942 Beveridge Report, the victory of Labour in the 1945 election, and the gradual extension of the welfare state.” (Palmer, 2002, 200) Arguably, however, the road forward has not been without bumps, and twists and turns. Palmer is right in asserting that in the immediate aftermath of the war the future seemed bright for the Beveridge Reports recommendations. Churchill tried to revoke the wartime social consensus in the 1945 election and was soundly beaten by Labour. Moreover, Labour attracted popular support because it proudly and successfully trumpeted its commitment to the new social programmes in the election campaign of 1945. The two posters from the 1945 campaign make it plain that Labour trumpeted itself as the party of women, workers and housing. In essence it campaigned on the basis of the revolutionary appeal of the wartime social consensus being carried forward into peacetime. Labour Election Posters, 1945 Source: Beers, 2009): 689, 690. The promise of a new social consensus epitomized by the Beveridge Report was alive and well under the first postwar Labour government. A spate of legislation introduced in the next five years established the Welfare State: These included the Family Allowances Act 1945 , National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1946, National Insurance Act 1946, National Health Service Act 1946, Pensions (Increase) Act 1947, Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act 1949, National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1948, National Insurance Act 1949. However, the Beveridge Reports impact since 1945, particularly in the last thirty years demands closer analysis. Generically, Francis G Castles argues that black swans – cataclysmic events such as the Second World War – rarely thrown states off there social and political development. Particularly, he argues that the admittedly revolutionary rhetoric of the Beveridge Report was muted in practice and that the social legislation that the Labour government instituted between 1945 and 1949 represented a continuation of pre-war policy influenced by the experience of total war rather than a radical departure. (Castles, 2010, 94-95) On another level Jane Lewis argues that the welfare state continued to struggle with the role of women, particularly single-mothers long after the Beveridge Report attempted to integrate them into the social security network. She argues that the post-war settlement rested “on male wages, full employment and stable families” (Lewis, 1998, 265) basic beliefs that simply did not hold true. She further argues that significant changes in the roles of women and the institution of marriage forced the Finer Commission to revisit the issue of single-parent families in 1969. It concluded that the state had to accept a larger role in securing the well-being of single parent, predominantly single-female-parent families. That said its recommendations were never adopted. (Lewis, 1998, 272) Writing on the fiftieth anniversary of the Beveridge Reports initial release Alec L. Parrott outlined the attacks on the principles of the Report that had occurred during the Thatcher era in Great Britain. (Parrott, 1992, passim.) Most recently, the new Conservative government in the U.K. Has also moved against the Reports provision of unlimited unemployment insurance. A recent editorial in The Independent reminded readers that Idleness was one of the five great evils identified in the Beveridge Report originally and that a succession of governments from both sides of the House have failed to address it adequately: “Idleness was one of the great evils identified by William Beveridge in his 1942 report. It was one of the failings of the Blair-Brown government that it did not do enough to break the cycle of worklessness in the boom times; but it was Margaret Thatcher who broke parts of our society in the first place.” (“Fairness, Mr Cameron? Lets hope so”, 2010) In practice the ideals of the Beveridge Report have never been fully realized. Indeed, as ideals and revolutionary ideals at that, they may never have been realizable in the hurly-burly of electoral politics. However, the ideals of the Beveridge Report are the foundation on which the modern welfare state was build in Great Britain and continue to provide the parameters for the debate on the welfare state that is ongoing. Bibliography Primary Sources Beveridge, Sir William. Social Insurance and Allied Services, Report. London: HMSO, 1942. Print. Secondary Sources Abel-Smith, Brian. "The Beveridge Report: Its origins and outcomes". International Social Security Review, 45:1-2 (1992) 5-16. Addison, Paul. The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War. London: Cape, 1975. Print. Beers, Laura. “Labours Britain, Fight for it Now!” The Historical Journal 52.3 (2009): 667-695. Print. Calder, Angus. The Peoples War: Britain, 1939-1945. London: Panther, 1969. Print. Castles, Francis G. “Black swans and elephants on the move: the impact of emergencies on the welfare state.” Journal of European Social Policy 20.2 (2010): 91-101. Print. Cottam, Hilary. "Participatory systems: moving beyond 20th century institutions." Harvard International Review 31.4 (2010): 50-55. Print. “Fairness, Mr Cameron? Lets hope so”. (October 10, 2010). The Independent. Web. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-fairness-mr-cameron-lets-hope-so-2102411.html. Grady, Jo. "From Beveridge to Turner: laissez-faire to neoliberalism." Capital & Class 34.2 (2010): 163-180. Print. Jenkins, Roy. Churchill: A Biography. London: Plume, 2002. Lewis, Jane. “The problems of lone-mother families in twentieth-century Britain.” Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 20(3) (1998): 251-283. Print. "Memories of war." Nursing Older People 17.8 (2005): 10-17. Palmer, Bryan D. "Reasoning rebellion: E.P. Thompson, British Marxist Historians, and the making of dissident political mobilization." Labour/Le Travail (2002): 187-219. Print. Parrott, Alec L. “Social Security: Does the wartime dream have to become a peacetime nightmare?” International Labour Review 131(3) (1992): 367-386. Print Read More