Creating the Welfare State in Britain, 1945–1960
- 20 January 1996
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Social Policy
- Vol. 25 (1) , 83-103
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047279400000076
Abstract
Political consensus on the scope and structure of the welfare state in post-war Britain has been much overstated. The Labour governments (1945–51), committed to universalism and a planned economy, gave state welfare a central role in guaranteeing ‘fair shares for all’ and used it to help secure union co-operation over wage restraint. The Conservative governments (1951–64), committed to the restoration of ‘sound finance’, abandoned these objectives and attacked components of the welfare state designed to control prices and mediate demands for higher wages. The author concludes that, for comparative social policy studies to be effective, differing frameworks of state welfare have to be more exactly defined.Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Resignation at the Treasury: the Social Services Committee and the Failure to Reform the Welfare State, 1955–57Journal of Social Policy, 1989