'The British welfare regime has been profoundly shaped by ideological assumptions about family, work and nation in British society.' Discuss.
'The British welfare regime has been profoundly shaped by ideological assumptions about family, work and nation in British society.' Discuss.
Since the implementation of the modern British welfare state in 1945, the various regimes have been organised around what Williams (1989) refers to as 'the 'ideological triangle' of family, work and nation. This concept draws attention to the way in which welfare policies and practices are the product of a society characterised by normative representations of class, race and gender, which in turn determine the constitution of welfare citizenship. Since 1945, ideological assumptions underpinning the social settlement have altered along with the changing political, economic and social landscape of Britain. This essay will map these changes, demonstrating the consequences for the development of successive welfare regimes.
The welfare settlement of the post-war years is commonly seen to embody a social democratic approach, with strong universal and collectivist principles. However, it was structured around a particularly conservative familial ideology based upon assumptions of a 'normal' patriarchal, white nuclear family, with the male worker providing for his wife, whose role was that of homemaker and mother within the domestic sphere, and their children.
This breadwinner model was associated with the notion of the 'family wage', from which the husband was to pay into a system of social insurance, and the state in turn would provide financial support to the worker and his dependants, in times of unemployment, sickness, disability through industrial injury, and old age. These financial benefits were set at subsistence level, in order to provide both an incentive to work, and also to encourage families to pay for private welfare provision. Thus it is clear that there was an expectation that the 'the family' and the market would meet individual need with regard to income maintenance and caring responsibilities, with state intervention only in exceptional circumstances.
As well as being strongly gendered, with the construction of women's dependency on the male breadwinner, together with the promotion of their role in reproducing and socializing future citizens (Davin, 1978), the assumptions underpinning this regime were also highly racialized, with notions of the British nation informed by an Imperial ideology that promulgated the cultural supremacy of the British (white) 'race' (Hall, 1998).
During the immediate post-war years there was a significant labour shortage and so the British government began a deliberate policy of encouraging immigration from Commonwealth countries. The British Nationality Act 1948 enshrined in law the right of Commonwealth citizens and their families to work and settle in Britain. However, many migrants found that despite Commonwealth citizenship, their immediate welfare needs were not being met (Clarke et al, 2001). For example, the eligibility criteria for provision of public housing, with regards to length of residence, served to exclude the newly arrived migrants.
The 'ideological triangle' of family, work and nation, underpinning the post-war welfare regime thus excluded, or at best restricted, access to many of the benefits and services of the new welfare regime for women and black families. However, these same groups, particularly black workers, were employed in welfare services, and were integral to its success. Since the labour market was also structured around divisions of class, gender and 'race', the use of these groups kept the costs of the welfare system down.
However, during the 1960s a series of challenges emerged from various quarters. Welfare users and their advocates, as well as social movements representing women, ethnic minorities and the disabled, criticized the discriminatory and oppressive policies and practices of state welfare, and the principle of 'universalism' was exposed to be, in practice, highly selective (ibid).
These critiques combined to unsettle the ideological assumptions concerning family, work and nation. Demographic changes gave weight to these debates.
A steep rise in the divorce rate following the Divorce Reform Act 1969, led to increasing numbers of lone parents, ...
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However, during the 1960s a series of challenges emerged from various quarters. Welfare users and their advocates, as well as social movements representing women, ethnic minorities and the disabled, criticized the discriminatory and oppressive policies and practices of state welfare, and the principle of 'universalism' was exposed to be, in practice, highly selective (ibid).
These critiques combined to unsettle the ideological assumptions concerning family, work and nation. Demographic changes gave weight to these debates.
A steep rise in the divorce rate following the Divorce Reform Act 1969, led to increasing numbers of lone parents, often women who were thus no longer financially dependent on their husbands, together with a steadily growing number of women in paid employment, challenged the gender norms of the post-war period. Lone parent families, including many from the ethnic Afro-Caribbean community, and a steady increase in the numbers of elderly women living alone, laid bare the assumption of the 'ideal' nuclear family. Coupled with these changes, the cultural diversity of Britain, following mass immigration from both the West Indies in the 1950s and the sub-continent in the 1960s, led to the weakening of the assumption that 'nation' = British = white.
The final unsettling came in the early 1970s, following a worldwide economic recession, which led to mass unemployment in many of the western, capitalist countries, including Britain, and full male employment was no longer attainable. Indeed, many more women and black workers were being employed in low paid, flexible, part-time work, often not earning enough to contribute to the National Insurance system. These structural changes in the labour market led to concern about the costs of welfare and added fuel to challenges emerging from the New Right.
The New Right critique of the welfare system was based around three interrelated themes. Firstly, it claimed that state intervention in the economy and the labour market had contributed to the structural decline in industry. Secondly, it argued that high rates of tax, coupled with what it perceived to be overly-generous levels of welfare benefits, created disincentives for investment and undermined the will to work, leading to a situation where 'the rich don't work because they get too little money, while the poor don't work because they get too much' (Galbraith, 1958). This final point leads directly to the third aspect of the New Right critique. It was argued that the state had caused the demoralization of the nation and had created a culture of dependency.
Although this critique was not supported with empirical evidence, it had a significant ideological impact, and was used extensively throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s to justify the many reforms to the welfare regime, following the election to government of the Thatcher administration in 1979. Perhaps the most significant feature of Conservative policy regarding welfare was its attempt to 'roll back the state', involving the restructuring and reorganization of the welfare regime. This strategy was grounded in a neo-liberal view, which espoused the primacy of the market over the state in welfare provision. This restructuring aimed to break the state's monopoly on welfare provision by enhancing the role of the private and the voluntary sectors, along with more responsibility being given to the informal care provided by, and within the family.
The Community Care Act 1991, designed to move the mentally ill and the disabled from state-run institutions back into the community, or perhaps more accurately the 'family', led to a significant increase of informal, family carers, and given the gendered division of labour still prevalent in Britain, this role was usually undertaken by women. Further pieces of legislation, such as the Criminal Justice Act 1991 and the Child Support Act 1991, also sought to increase family responsibility for the welfare and the discipline of its members. These moves reflected the ideological assumptions underpinning the New Right's approach to the family, and it was very much the same 'traditional' model upon which the post-war welfare regime was based.
Although the state's role of provider was substantially lessened, it retained its functions of funding and purchasing provision. This purchaser/provider split was part of an attempt to introduce the principles of the market into the welfare regime, such as consumer choice and competition. These values were evident in both education and health care, where the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 led to the introduction of quasi-markets within the health service.
The Education Reform Act 1988 included policies that also clearly demonstrated the New Right's ideology with respect to the 'nation', in which the British, or rather, English culture held a privileged position over 'foreign' cultures. Lewis (2000) argued that this ideology embodied a very specific cultural essentialism, and emphasised the inevitability of cultural differences between different nations. The anti-racist initiatives introduced into schools in the 1970s, were believed to have contributed to a lowering of standards and a dilution of 'British' values. Thus the Act implemented a new curriculum, which emphasised the need to teach traditional values. The curriculum was also designed to meet the needs of employers, underlining the importance of the work ethic in New Right ideology.
This work ethic was strongly promoted via the social security system, which was also reformed during the 1980s, in an effort to provide the incentive to work and perhaps more importantly to cut the costs of welfare. There was a move away from universalism towards a more selective system, and benefits were increasingly targeted towards those most in need, with a growth in means-testing and a tightening of eligibility criteria, together with the devaluing of unemployment benefit throughout the decade. In the 1996 Social Security Act, Unemployment Benefit was replaced by Jobseeker's Allowance, a discursive shift reflecting the increasingly expected obligations of those not active in the labour market.
The ideological assumptions of family, work and nation, underpinning the neo-liberal welfare regime of the Conservative governments of the 1980s and the 1990s were promoted vigorously, despite being at considerable odds with reality. Notwithstanding the dominance of the 'traditional' family ideology, the diversification of 'the family' continued, and in the mid-1990s almost one-quarter of all families with dependent children were headed by a lone parent, usually the mother (Central Statistical Office, 1996). The restructuring of the labour market saw an increase in casual and flexible employment patterns, with increasing numbers of married women entering paid employment, and this together with high unemployment throughout the 18 years of Tory government, was perhaps most responsible for undermining the work ethic advocated by the New Right.
Whereas the ideological assumptions associated with the New Right approach were straightforward and aggressively liberal, those of New Labour, elected into government in 1997, were decidedly ambiguous. Their approach to welfare, the 'third way', attempted to reconcile the opposing principles of social democracy and liberalism, whilst taking account of the continuing critiques of welfare forwarded by service users and various social movements, with somewhat uneven and contradictory consequences.
The work ethic is a key element of New Labour's approach to welfare, with 'citizenship' being equated with 'waged work', which in turn is seen as a passport to social inclusion. This work ethic has been actively promoted both with the introduction in 1999 of the Working Families Tax Credit (since replaced with the Working Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit) and in New Labours welfare-to-work programme. Indeed, the prominence of the 'New Deal for Lone Parents' points to a recognition of the diversification of family forms. However, the emphasis on paid work has been criticised for devaluing the unpaid, but essential work of care within the family. As Land (1999) points out, the message to lone mothers appears to be that '...any job is better than providing full-time care for their own children at home.'
Despite the rhetorical recognition of the diversification of the family, it seems there is a lack of political will to support alternative forms of family. For example, under pressure to keep welfare spending within the budgetary constraints of the previous Tory administration, the New Labour government implemented the abolition of the lone parent's premium in 1998. Also, although lone parents are encouraged to 'get off welfare and get into work', there is a marked lack of state funded nursery provision (ibid). Thus it seems that although New Labour have been forced to recognize the existence of alternative forms of family, the ideology of the 'traditional' family is still propagated by social and welfare policies.
With regards to New Labour's approach to nation, this too has been both ambiguous and contradictory. Constitutional reform brought changes in the governance of Scotland and Wales, leading to Britain becoming a more multi-national nation (Clarke et al, 2001), and New Labour were also willing to accept the multiculturalism of Britain. However, there have been two Acts of Parliament (in 1999 and 20002) concerning immigration and asylum since New Labour came to office, both concerned to deter refugees from entering Britain. For example, a feature of the first Act was the removal of benefit entitlement for asylum seekers, whereas the 2002 Act focuses on the control and removal of unsuccessful applicants (Refugee Council, 2003). Thus it appears that, in keeping with its approaches to the family, New Labour's acceptance of cultural diversity is combined with a defence of the nation against alien 'others'.
The developments within the British welfare system, outlined above, reveal the significant influence of ideology in shaping the various regimes. Ideologies embody a set of particular assumptions, ideas and beliefs, which work to serve the interests of certain social groups, usually the most powerful (Muncie and Wetherall, 1997). For example, feminists would point to the persistence of the 'breadwinner' family model, which both reflects and reinforces the patriarchal structure of society.
Another feature of ideologies is their somewhat partial account of reality, and this is quite clearly seen in both the post-war and the neo-liberal welfare regimes, with regard to the nation. Both equate British with being white, which particularly following the two decades of mass immigration of Commonwealth citizens, is quite clearly not the case.
However, perhaps the most important feature of ideology is in its power to become a taken for granted, and collectively shared ideal. This is prominent in the underpinning assumptions concerning family, work and nation in all three regimes discussed. The similarities between them are striking, despite their supposed political differences. Also, notwithstanding the numerous critiques challenging each regime, the ideas embodied in the 'ideological triangle' continue to be popular, potent and desirable within both the political and the social spheres.
References
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