Bread For All: The Origins of the Welfare State

by Chris Renwick

Today, everybody seems to agree that something has gone badly wrong with the British welfare state. In the midst of economic crisis, politicians and commentators talk about benefits as a lifestyle choice, and of "skivers" living off hard-working "strivers" as they debate what a welfare state fit for the twenty-first century might look like.

This major new history tells the story of one the greatest transformations in British intellectual, social and political life: the creation of the welfare state, from the Victorian workhouse, where you had to be destitute to receive help, to a moment just after the Second World War, when government embraced responsibilities for people's housing, education, health and family life, a commitment that was unimaginable just a century earlier. Though these changes were driven by developments in different and sometimes unexpected currents in British life, they were linked by one over-arching idea: that through rational and purposeful intervention, government can remake society. It was an idea that, during the early twentieth century, came to inspire people across the political spectrum. Not only could poverty be conquered, but the policies used to do so could produce better citizens who would in turn create a modern and dynamic Britain. In exploring this extraordinary transformation, Bread for All explores and challenges our assumptions about what the welfare state was originally for, and the kinds of people who were involved in creating it. In doing so, it asks what the idea of the welfare state continues to mean for us today.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Political Science

323 pages, Hardcover

First published September 7, 2017

About the author

Chris Renwick is a historian of Britain since the early nineteenth century. His main area of expertise is the relationship between biology, social science, and politics, in particular how the interaction of the three has shaped the way we think about, study, and govern society. His work on these subjects has received international and interdisciplinary recognition.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bread for All – An excellent history of Social Reform.

If you were to ask many people about social reform today, they would refer to the post-Second World War reforms by the Labour government, who were reflecting people’s hopes for the future. When we fast forward to today, the common argument today about our welfare state is that something has gone badly wrong.

If you are unaware if the history of social reform and the welfare state, then Bread for All explores the history bringing it up to the problems of today. One thing that is clear is that social reform, how to deal with the welfare of those of need is nothing new, and similar debates have been going on for well over two hundred years.

The historian Chris Renwick challenges the many assumptions that people hold about the welfare state and social reform, and by looking back we can look forward. Sometimes while reading this book you feel that the politician’s names have changed but some of the attitudes have not, especially concerning the health of the nation.

Taking us back to when the Poor Laws were originally created in 1601, under Elizabeth I and the various transitions that if has gone through. How the 1834 reform act was created to answer the problems of the agricultural economy but by 1850 was not fit for purpose with the new industrialisation and the many changes that Britain underwent during the Victorian period.

Renwick, guides through the change of thinking of the laissez-faire free market liberal thinking, and the self-help, individualism and the moral being. To 1906, when the change in political thinking, that what went before was not changing the situation of the poor and it was 1909, that two reports were published offering different opinions on social reform.

One of the mist fascinating periods for social reform and welfare was from 1900 to the creation of the welfare state after the Second World War. Dealing not only with how to deal with unemployment, the housing and the soldiers that came home from all the wars that Britain involved itself in. Using the Boer War as the spur for social change as the working classes became the subject of the speculation they simply were not physically fit enough and posed a threat to the fabric of the nation.

This is an excellent book for those who are social historians as well as those who have a general interest in the development of welfare and welfare reform. Simply an excellent book.

[Nick Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

good but total absence of church/ CSU/ nonconformism/ William Blakcley - even William Temple - in the story. Hmmmm

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is as much a history of turn-of-the-century liberalism and the Liberal Party as it is a general history of the Welfare State. Building from the 17th century Poor Laws, through the introduction of new educational and housing standards following WW1, the story culminates with the p0st-WW2 social programme enacted by the Atlee government. But, as Renwick attempts to show, this programme had its roots in more than 100 years of advocacy and reform, when - in the 19th century - political philosophers and social philanthropists developed new, often much more sophisticated ways of tackling societal problems like poverty.

Renwick's central thesis is that 'while the British welfare state has its roots in different political camps, it owes most to liberalism [...] Nineteenth-century liberalism played a central role in both causing and defining problems that have loomed large in debates about welfare and social policy over the past two hundred years' (pp.8-9), and he is largely successful in this endeavour. The book engagingly traces the emergence of what is today commonly called Radical Liberalism, devoting appropriate space to particular individual strains of thought from philosophers and reformers such as John Stuart Mill, RH Tawney, and John Maynard Keynes (amongst others). The impact of the two World Wars are pivotal in this story, and Renwick spends time examining the specific impact of the pre- and post-WW1 Liberal governments on education, housing, and democratic reform (such as limitations placed on the House of Lords, as well as enfranchisement of women and the working classes), which lay the seeds for later reform programmes.

The central role of liberalism in all of this is plain to see, but Renwick nonetheless takes this emphasis a little further than is perhaps entirely accurate. Though in the introduction he initially extricates what he calls 'liberalism' from the specific fortunes (or misfortunes) of the Liberal Party, in other places (in fact, on the same page as he does this) he is guilty of tying the two together. For instance, he posits that the widespread endorsement of Keynesian economics 'may very well have been one of the major factors in the Liberal Party's decline as an electoral force' (p.9). But this is simply not the case. The Liberal Party's popularity had been declining as early as 1905, and Renwick's own narrative acknowledges the central importance of factors such as Liberal policy towards Ireland (p.94), which is much more pertinent to the party's decline as simply being outmoded by other parties. Further, the emphasis on liberalism obscures the extent to which liberals were influenced by other thinkers, particularly socialists, as much as they themselves were an influence on others. Renwick places the direction of influence slightly too far in favour of liberals, when in fact the very figures he discusses (for eg. Hobson) were as overtly influenced by strands of socialist thought as they were liberalism (more explicitly in the case of the Webbs).

Another weakness is the little acknowledgement of Chartism's impact on subsequent, and where it is mentioned, the decline of the Chartists is lazily attributed to them 'run[ning] out of steam' (p.60). There is no discussion of the state response (both reformative and repressive) towards the Chartists whatsoever. This is somewhat typical of Renwick's approach, which in places borders on "great man" history more than an even-handed look at the interaction of different actors from different stratum of society, and too often excludes grassroots movements in favour of middle and upper class reformers. To be sure, without the elite reformers, it is questionable how much of these changes would have ever been enacted. But the middle class philanthropists did not exist in a vacuum and they, as much as the philosophers mentioned earlier, were very much impacted by the emergence of Labourism and socialism onto the political scene at the turn of the century. Again, Renwick's narrative implicitly acknowledges this while also trying to obscure it (p.62).

The pro-Liberal slant (not objectionable in and of itself) weakens Renwick's discussion further when he makes a typical, though inaccurate, assessment of Marxism on pp.61-2, juxtaposing socialists like Marx, who 'believed [...] revolutionary activity was necessary to force social change' with 'the socialist movement that kept faith with parliament and democracy' (pp.61-2). Renwick is perhaps unaware, then, that Marx advocated democratic participaiton in order to enact the revolutionary change he advocated. Engels, and later Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky, went further still to specifically extol the virtues of parliamentarianism. But, as is far too commonplace nowadays, these currents go entirely ignored and the diversity within Marxist thought is reduced to a misleading juxtaposition between democracy and revolution, without any examination of what the latter term might actually mean.

This remains, however, an important contribution to the study of welfare in the UK, and indeed general political history. Given the long-term electoral decline of the Liberal Party and the still-contested role of liberalism today, it is easy to overlook how central liberalism was for setting the parameters of the discussions that are still playing out today over the breadth (and limits) to welfarism.

[Richard Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent read for a subject that could be very dull. As many have pointed out, it dispelled many preconceptions about champions of the welfare state.

[Shane Goodyear · Rating 4 out of 5]

* The modern welfare state is a product of 15o years of liberal and conservative polices before 1948
* Reforms of the poor law in the 1830s
* Discussion o. What poverty is
* Is it people have bad morals and end up poor
* Rowntrees cycles of poverty in his work on poverty in yours in 1897 and 1930 showed it was not just down to moral character
* I’ll health, old age, boom and busy economy, unemployment in certain trades or jobs can all lead to poverty
* A system of contributing insurance schemes before the war in pensions and unemployment where about but where all means tested
* Argues that the welfare state has lead to peoples way of life being much better and social mobility
* Key characters: Edwin Chadwick, rowntree, Lloyd George, Webb, John Maynard Kanyes
* Kensionion economic thought had a big part to play. Government run up huge deficits for the short term to make it cheaper in the future
* Like big public works to grease productivity and work so people get money to spend keeps the economy going
* Welfare state is a mixture of captalism and socialism
* Talk about policy between liberal, labour and conservative governments in between the war
* The failure after the First World War to build homes for hero’s, due to economic crises.
* New entity composed of old elements

[EunSeong · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the sub-title states, Bread for All is a book about the origins of the British Welfare State. Interesting vignettes of famous figures as well as unlikely champions of social reform (such as Neville Chamberlain), put into historical context and detail, interweave with each other throughout the book. While not every character or incident that influenced the making of the Welfare State is mentioned, the author hits on some of the main ones (William Beveridge, Nye Bevan, Seebohm Rowntree, John Maynard Keynes, etc.) and makes sure that the book stays true to being readable rather than dry and academic.

[Angela Platt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the historic roots of the UK welfare state - starting with 18th and 19th century views towards the poor, including Malthusian theory which suggested the poor should be weeded out via natural selection.

As an American this is an intriguing look at what catalysed socialized care in our cousin country.

[Ietrio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Badly written:

> When they read it [David Ricardo's book], many of his contemporaries and successors reckoned the book was so good it made him [Ricardo] second only to Adam Smith.

Otherwise, Renwick has an unrefined mind. He takes the word "poverty" from any author as simply "poverty", without any shade of what that might mean, or how it might differ from one author to another.

[Harriet Rix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent... Will use as academic reading for a level next year - remarkably accessible for a more ‘academic’ book. The story of the creation of the welfare state is fascinating and I particularly aspects on Poor Law Provision, ideologies such as idealism, New Liberal reforms and then people’s reactions to the newly created National Health Service.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital and fascinating account of how the Poor Law became a progressive welfare state. A must read for all political nerds!

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book.