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 laissezfaire to social liberalism from the 1870s, and the enduring impact of lateVictorian 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 midtwentieth 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 reemerged 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...

Binding: Hardback;244 pages; Publisher: Oxford University Press; Classification: HBJD1; Weight: 656 g; Dimensions: 238 x 163 x 20

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