Perhaps the most important of all the welfare reform which came out of the Second World War was initiated when Sir William Beveridge (a respected economist) submitted what came to be known as the Beveridge Report, following an enquiry which was set up a year earlier by the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services. The purpose of the report was to investigate social circumstances and examine ways in which the state welfare and benefit system could be managed with greater efficiency (Harris, 1997). The Labour party had entered into a wartime coalition with the Conservative party in 1940 and one year later the Labour MP Arthur Greenwood declared that there was to be the construction of an inter-departmental committee, made up of civil servants from a range of social governmental departments, which would survey Britain’s allied and social insurance companies and services in order to make recommendations on how improvements could be made (Harris, 1997).
The report stated that the provision of security from the ‘cradle to the grave’ was not only achievable but necessary, and whilst many of the concepts outlined in the report already existed in other forms throughout society, the document called for sweeping reform and the elimination of what Beveridge called the five ‘giants’; Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor & Idleness. It was emphasised that these were the imperative issues that needed to be dealt with in the years following the war during which Britain (and much of Europe) would need to be re-built (Beveridge, 1954). The basis of the Beveridge report was a series of surveys which had been carried out between World War One and World War Two and covered issues such as poverty, old age and childcare. Aside from radical reforms proposed to the whole structure of the welfare state, a detailed description of the economic situation and how to manage the proposed changes, Beveridge also argued that in a declining populace there must be the ‘imperative to give first place in social expenditure to the care of childhood and to the safeguarding of maternity’ (Beveridge, 1954).
On the back of this report Beveridge created the Social Insurance and Allied Services in 1942 in order that, in return for a National Insurance contribution, ‘benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed.’ (Beveridge, 1954). The National Health Service provided universally accessible healthcare which was essential if the country was to rebuild its population successfully. Beveridge championed the efficiency of universal benefits and the Universal Child Benefit was one such scheme which was designed encouraged people to start families in a period where birth rates were very low.
The Second World War had certainly disrupted schooling and the development of educational services throughout Britain. Due to the evacuation of children from the cities and urban regions of the country to more rural areas a discontinuity in educational experience occurred for the pupils concerned. This also led to many school closures across the nation (Carr & Hartnett, 1996). In 1944 there was not only a commitment to full employment from the government, but more crucially the Butler Act was passed in order to reform education across the breadth of society. From this a ministry of education was established which had influential power over the Local Education Authorities (LEAs) along with a universal educational system which was designed to provide accessible education to all of Britain’s children, regardless of societal situation, and also classified the modern segmentation of primary and secondary education for pupils at the age of 11 (Silver, 1973). A proposal from the Norwood Committee from the previous year was also acknowledged in the act, which created the basis of the (hierarchical) tripartite educational system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools (Bartlett & Burton, 2007). The Norwood Committee had stated that particular attention should be paid to the provision of more general educational requirements that would benefit all pupils, regardless of background:
‘In spite of differences all pupils have common needs and a common destiny; physical and spiritual and moral ideals are of vital concern to all alike’ (Silver, 1973:82).
Whilst a core curriculum was outlined as necessary for all, very differing kinds of schooling were proposed for pupils, ultimately determined on the whole by their societal background. This was due predominantly to the foundations of this new educational scheme being based in principal on antiquated societal divisions. As Bartlett & Burton (2007) assert:
‘Explicitly different types of curriculum were deemed to be relevant for these pupils. The civil servants who had forged this new version of the education system drew their authority from the division of humanity outlined in Plato’s Republic.’ (Bartlett & Burton, 2007: 66).
The 1944 Education Act is generally regarded as the pivotal moment in the definition of modern education in Britain. As Chitty stated in 2004, the Education Act ‘owed much to a growing appreciation among policy-makers, administrators and teachers of the importance of state education to economic advance and social welfare’. The establishment of a new and nationally funded system of education was put in place along with the right to a secondary level of education, something which up until that time had to be paid for. Little more than a month after Germany surrendered to the Allies Winston Churchill (a staunch advocate of democracy) called for a general election, stating that the ‘prolongation of the life of the existing parliament by another two or three years would be a very serious constitutional lapse. Even now, no one under 30 has ever cast a vote at a general election, or even at a by-election, since the registers fell out of action at the beginning of the war... we must look to the termination of the war against Nazism as a pointer which will fix the date of the general election.’ (Addison, 1975). Churchill launched a vehement campaign against the Labour party, stating that ‘a socialist policy is abhorrent to British ideas on freedom... A socialist state could not afford to suffer opposition - no socialist system can be established without a political police. (The Labour government) would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.’ In spite of Churchill’s rhetoric and after 14 years in opposition Labour won the 1945 general election in a landslide victory which saw them take a majority of 146 seats (Addison, 1975). It was felt their success was due largely to their promise of the radicalisation of British society in favour of the people, who felt they deserved a better standard of living in their society after the sacrifices and struggles set upon them by the subsequent years of war, which had also now been won by them (Bartlett & Burton, 2007). The nationalisation of fuel, transport, iron and steel production, along with the Bank of England was all proposed in their winning manifesto, which appropriately went by the title of ‘Let Us Face the Future’ (Bartlett & Burton, 2007). The government conceded that their intervention would be necessary in order to keep checks on prices, rates of inflation and resources but also in the instigation of a National Health Service (as proposed in the Beveridge report).
This period just after the Second World War indicates the change in public attitude towards not only child welfare but the welfare of society as a whole. The Labour government had won the election on a promise of social reform and a new welfare state. The same government when in opposition had supported the outlined reforms to education proposed by the Conservatives. Once in power within their programme of social reform they implemented the tripartite educational system and also made school attendance compulsory up to the age of 15 in 1947. The Labour party defended the tripartite system by asserting that due to the abolition of fees in all state-maintained schools, entrance in the three-school system would be granted through merit rather than financial standing. The number of young people attending universities was also increased and there was a firm belief that pupils would not only have access to a ‘complete’ education but also one of the highest quality (Carr & Hartnett, 1996). The mentality behind the educational reformation is explained succinctly by Bartlett & Burton (2007), who affirm that ‘advance was seen as essential as much on the grounds of realising the nation’s economic and industrial potential as on grounds of social justice’.
Disagreement over the implementation of family allowances occurred between the Conservative and Labour parties in 1942 after the release of a white paper on the matter. This led to the development of family allowances being delayed until the execution of the Family Allowance Act in June, 1945 (Addison, 1975). Beveridge was generally against means tested benefits on the whole and in his report he had originally proposed a flat-rate allowance of 8 shillings per child in a family, excluding the first-born if a parent was working. The non-contributory nature of this benefit meant that it would be financed by general taxation and everyone would be entitled to receive it. When the Family Allowance Act was eventually imposed, the recommendation at the time of 9 shillings per week was reduced to 5 shillings and rather than a subsistence payment as Beveridge had proposed it took the form of a subsidy (Addison, 1975).
In spite of a steady increase in inflation throughout the 1940s due to the war effort and the subsequent decrease in the value of the family allowance payments the government was consistently reluctant to increase them and the food subsidies which had existed since wartime were cut in 1952 by the Conservative party who had taken office a year earlier. The reduction in food subsidy coincided with an increase of 3 shillings per week on the family allowance in order to secure people against the nutritional implications of the cuts (Fraser, 2002). The Conservative chancellor, Richard Butler had campaigned against the family allowance as a way to save money but this was effectively opposed by the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance but more specifically, John Boyd-Carpenter. The act was broadened in 1956 to include all school pupils in an effort to persuade more families to keep their children in education but the bread subsidy was abolished in the same year in order to justify the expenditure (Fraser, 2002). The Exchequer remained focused on revising the Family Allowance Act for several years after and cuts were proposed again by the new Chancellor, Peter Thorneycroft in 1957 as part of a range of money-saving measures. The case was put forward that to remove the allowance for the second child of each family as well as the first, money could be saved and re-appropriated to larger families for whom the threat of malnutrition was more critical. Boyd-Carpenter managed again to successfully counter these arguments and again saved the family allowance, this time leading to the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, vetoing the proposals and the resultant resignation of Thorneycroft (Kuhnle, 2000).
Although not directly connected to the war another important milestone that came out of the post-war drive to create legislation for the protection of children was the Children’s Act of 1948. Six years before this (in 1944) the twelve-year old boy, Dennis O’Neill had died from the cruelty and neglect imposed upon him by his foster father at their isolated Shropshire farm. An enquiry into the matter found a variety of reasons why this situation occurred. Sub-standard record-keeping, lack of coherent partnerships with other organisations, poor supervision and a failure to act upon warning signals were just some of the shortcomings that were highlighted by the investigation (Kuhnle, 2000). The Committee on the Care of Children was decidedly influenced by the report’s findings and the Children’s Act was created. The act meant that new, localised children’s departments with trained officers were launched and would now take responsibility for children’s welfare. As was indicative of the attitudes prevalent at the time, an understanding existed that the effect on children separated from their families had largely negative consequences. The predominant intention of the act was to ensure that children who were deprived of a normal home life were to receive the same level of care and attention as those who were not (Kuhnle, 2000).
A major consequence of the Second World War was a dramatic increase in public demand for a post war society that was an improvement on what had been before. There was not only a new level of optimism felt by the nation but also a sense of responsibility to enhance the standard of living for all in society but particularly those who needed help, or could not help themselves. Children’s welfare to this day has been largely built upon from those steps taken in post-war British society. Whilst acts and benefits have been consistently revised and improved as the years have passed and as knowledge has increased, the attitudes of the original legislation are still reflected. The victory of the war and the subsequent re-building of nations created the opportunity to not just re-build what was before but improve it for everyone, including generations to come. As stated by a World War Two veteran on a popular wartime nostalgia forum; ‘If the war did one great deed? Then it was the removal of the evil old days, of sick children, and half starved people on the lowest rungs of society. Yet this was the country that owned a mighty empire, with colossal riches flowing into the pockets of some, while our kids had rickets in the streets’ (Sapper, 2004).
Bibliography
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