This collection of twelve essays reviews the history of welfare in Britain over the past 150 years. It focuses on the ideas that have shaped the development of British social policy, and on the thinkers who have inspired and also contested the welfare state. It thereby constructs an intellectual history of British welfare since the concept first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century.
The essays divide into four sections. The first considers the transition from laissez-faire to social liberalism from the 1870s, and the enduring impact of late-Victorian philosophical idealism on the development of the welfare state. It focuses on the moral philosophy of T. H. Green and his influence on key figures in the history of British social policy like William Beveridge, R. H. Tawney, and William Temple. The second section is devoted to the concept of 'planning' which was once, in the mid-twentieth century, at the heart of social policy and its implementation, but which has subsequently fallen out of favour. A third section examines the intellectual debate over the welfare state since its creation in the 1940s. Though a consensus seemed to have emerged during the Second World War over the desirability and scope of a welfare state extending 'from the cradle to the grave', libertarian and conservative critiques endured and re-emerged a generation later. A final section examines social policy and its implementation more recently, both at grass roots level in a study of community action in West London in the districts made infamous by the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, and at a systemic level where different models of welfare provision are shown to be in uneasy co-existence today.
The collection is a tribute to Jose Harris, emeritus professor of history in the University of Oxford and a pioneer of the intellectual history of social policy. Taken together, these essays conduct the reader through the key phases and debates in the history of British welfare.
"Foreword List of Contributors Lawrence Goldman: Introduction Part I: Idealism and its Legacy 1: Sandra den Otter: ""The Organized Selfishness of Empire"": Welfare Philosophies, Human Rights, and Empire in Britain, 1870-1920 2: Stuart Jones: The Civic Moment in British Social Thought: Civil Society and the Ethics of Citizenship, c. 1880-1914 3: Lawrence Goldman: Founding the Welfare State: Beveridge, Tawney and Temple 4: William Whyte: Private Benefit, Public Finance? Student Funding in late-twentieth century Britain Part II: Planning 5: Brian Harrison: Planning in Modern Britain: Its History and Dimensions 6: Daniel Ritschel: ""Socialist Realism"": The Short Life of Left-wing Economic Revisionism in the 1920s 7: Julia Moses: The Reluctant Planner: T. H. Marshall and Political Thought in British Social Policy Part III: Contesting Welfare 8: Ben Jackson: Richard Titmuss versus the IEA: the Transition from Idealism to Neo-liberalism in British Social Policy 9: Edmund Neill: Conservative Thinkers and the Post-War State, 1945-79 10: Matthew Grimley: You got an Ology? The Backlash Against Sociology in Britain, c. 1945-1990 Part III: Beyond the Welfare State 11: John Davis: Reshaping the Welfare State? Voluntary Action and Community in London, 1960-1975 12: Mark Bevir: A New Governance: Hierarchies, Markets, and Networks, cc. 1979-2010"
Lawrence Goldman was educated at Cambridge and at Yale where he was a Harkness Fellow. After a junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he spent 29 years as a university lecturer in Oxford and as a tutorial fellow of St. Peter's College, moving to the Directorship of the Institute of Historical Research in the University of London in 2014. From its publication in 2004 until 2014, he was the Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Throughout his career he has taught both modern British and American History and published widely on the political and social history of both countries, including studies of the history of workers' education, Victorian social science, and the biography of the political thinker and historian, R. H. Tawney.
Reviews for Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870: Essays in Honour of Jose Harris
This collection does careful justice to the powerful influence of Harris's work; the ideas and provocations explored in this volume are timely, persuasive, and valuable. * Anne Rodrick, Wofford College, H-Albion * This book as a whole exemplifies the great dividends to be reaped from following Harris's example in taking seriously the effects of ideas and epistemological frameworks in shaping welfare and economic policy and makes an excellent tributeto her important and wide-ranging work. * Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Journal of British Studies *
