The Beveridge Report: a common good embedded in policy

The Beveridge Report: a common good embedded in policy

After the hardship and destruction of two world wars, separated by a global Depression, people were ready for change. The 1941 wartime coalition government established an interdepartmental committee to look at health, social insurance and allied services as a way of keeping hope alive and the spirit strong. The report was written by William Beveridge and heralded the most revolutionary changes for the common good imaginable. It became a milestone in British history, known ever after as the Beveridge Report (1942). Recommendations were made for a ‘cradle-to-grave’ welfare state which provided for the health and well-being of everyone, the ‘five giants’ of which were: social security; a national health service; free education (including free school meals and milk); good-quality council housing; and the promise of full employment with decent pay and conditions. This was a revolutionary ideology that transformed the lives of British people. All this came about because of a change in the way society was seen, a freedom from oppression to accept a collective, cooperative responsibility for the well-being of all, a common good. The Labour Party led by Clement Attlee was elected into office at the end of the war in 1945 on the welfare state platform and met their promise of delivering these transformative changes. This was a major landmark in social justice thought and action.

[Post-war Britain] emerging from a long, bloody and destructive war … was desperate for change … the new laws were a paradigm shift: a radical change in the funding and organisation of health and social care and the support of those in need. (Ballatt et al, 2020: 1)

This was the political formalising of a radical new approach to welfare, an inclusive society, a radical act of kindness to care for each other by sharing ‘the risks of accident and illness, of unemployment, disability, dependency and poverty’ (Ballatt et al, 2020: 1). The costs of the war had been high, but the strength of the commitment was enormous, more a statement that we had become conscious that we needed each other. In much the same way, the COVID-19 pandemic is witnessing acts of kindness and connection in times of severe disconnection – a move towards values of kinship, community, cooperation.

Critique is essential for deepening democracy, and there have been retrospective critiques of the Beveridge report, notably its emphasis on class, that it ‘hid the giants Racism and Sexism, and the fights against them, behind statues to the Nation and the White Family’ (Williams, 1989: 162). Ironically, this was at a time when the ‘armies’ of women who stepped out of their roles as homemakers to play such a significant role in the ‘war effort’ were ‘persuaded’ back into the unpaid labour of home and family so as to leave the workplace free for ‘returning heroes’ – by both moral and legal means! In fact, although women over 21 got the vote in 1928, it was not until 1964 that the marriage bar preventing married women working in certain professions was ended by law, and not until 1975 that