How WW2 Created a Welfare State - WW2 - On the Homefront 013 - YouTube

December 1942.

British cities still lie in ruins after the Blitz.

Many who have lost their homes are forced to find shelter within the London underground

or the caves of the cliffs of Dover.

Across the country, the war has made the risk of want and disease even greater.

But this month, Sir William Beveridge presents a report that promises not only to repair

the damage of war but create a new world better than before.

It has been done in other countries, but here’s how World War II made the British welfare state

This is On the Homefront, a sub-series of World War Two in Real-Time; I'm Anna Deinhard.

In Britain, the Second World War has dramatically changed the government's relationship with

the people.

The state is now responsible for directly managing the economy, from deciding upon industrial

priorities to controlling food supply so everyone has enough to eat.

Families can also expect government aid if their homes are destroyed by bombing or their

breadwinners are conscripted to fight.

There is a new health care system for those injured by war or who contribute to the war

effort.

And in this state-planned economy, there has been a dramatic fall in the unemployment rate.

Before the war, it was rarely below 1,000,000, but by the summer of 1941, it is at 200,000,

and those numbers keep going down.

The idea that the state has a duty to provide for people in times of need is not new.

But that has traditionally only extended to the poorest and most destitute of society.

Now, the government bears a social responsibility to the whole nation.

The attitudes of the British people are also shifting.

People from all social classes have lost their homes, livelihood, and loved ones.

It has created a new sense of patriotism and equality of sacrifice that many want to remain

even after the war is over.

But the existing social security system remains incredibly confusing.

Different forms of social insurance were introduced at the beginning of the 20th century to protect

workers against things like the risk of sickness or unemployment.

But piecemeal reform meant it soon became a confusing mess of governmental, local, and

private schemes.

By 1941, seven different government departments administer different kinds of benefits, all

structured and financed in different ways.

This decentralized system has caused services to overlap and fail to make provisions for

many of the population.

In 1941, less than half the population is covered by the insurance system.

Changing all this has been a core aim of the labor movement for quite some time – but

their party is rarely in power.

That changed in May 1940 when the wartime coalition government of the Conservative Party

and the Labour Party under Prime Minister Winston Churchill takes office.

One concession to bring Labour into government was the establishment of a committee to review

the current insurance systems.

Now, on June 10th, 1941, Labour Minister without portfolio Arthur Greenwood sets up the Social

Insurance Committee.

It consists of civil workers from those seven departments involved in social insurance and

representatives of the Treasury.

Veteran civil servant and economist Sir William Beveridge is appointed chairman.

He is already an expert on the matter.

He worked on the unemployment insurance scheme introduced in 1911 and was the chairman of

the Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee in 1934.

An ambitious man, Beveridge is actually disappointed by the official brief.

The orders to write “a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied

services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations” hardly sound

world-shattering.

So what does Beveridge do?

He goes beyond it.

He quickly comes up with some revolutionary proposals that indicate he has no interest

in improving the current system but instead building a new one from scratch.

It causes a great deal of anxiety among the Cabinet about the extent of the expected report.

They ask Beveridge to change course.

But he refuses.

After some discussion, Arthur Greenwood writes to Beveridge on January 17th, 1942: “The

Report, when made, will be your own report: it will be signed by you alone, and the departamental

representatives will not be associated in any way with the views and recommendations

on questions of policy which it contains”.

The message is clear: no promises of action, you’re on your own, For Beveridge, it’s

pure motivation.

He hurls himself into his project.

His committee carefully compiles 127 pieces of reports on the state of social security,

the insurance system, and poverty.

They are written by various organizations such as insurance companies, trade unions,

research institutes, local authorities, and pressure groups.

Representatives from these organisations are then cross-examined in more than 50 private

evidence sessions.

Meanwhile, Beveridge launches a press campaign to foster support for his work, giving interviews

in newspapers and appearing in radio shows.

The Conservative members of government are more than a bit worried about all this.

In autumn, the Home Intelligence division of the Ministry of Information reports: “Three

years ago, the term social security was almost unknown to the public as a whole.

It now appears to be generally accepted as an urgent post-war need.”

The anxiety increases again in mid-November 1942 when Beveridge admits to the Daily Telegraph

that his report will take the country "half-way to Moscow."

And the completed report is ambitious as promised.

Beveridge identifies five so-called giants on the road to post-war reconstruction: "want,

disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness".

He declares his primary focus to be to abolish the first: want, through a comprehensive system

of social security.

This means that every citizen will be insured against loss of earning power - whether that

be from unemployment, sickness, or retirement – as well as guaranteed benefits when they

are born, when they marry, and when they die.

It will all be organized by a new Ministry of Social Security.

Almost as an afterthought, the report also proposes the creation of a National Health

Service.

But how much of a financial burden will this be?

The report admits that this is difficult to predict with variables like inflation and

national income.

However, the burden will be split between government tax revenue, an employer contribution,

and an employee contribution.

This three-way split is already the structure of most insurance schemes.

The main difference is that this will now be single and universal, with fixed proportional

contributions.

The estimated cost of all this will be 697 million pounds in the first year of implementation.

This isn’t new expenditure.

According to the report, 432 million would have been spent on social security schemes

anyway, a figure which doesn't include individual expenditure on medical care or various forms

of voluntary insurance/ Beveridge proposed budget does.

Unsurprisingly, the extent of the report’s financial obligation will be the hottest topic

of debate in the years to come.

But how radical all this is cannot be overstated.

Beveridge has called on the state to provide for its citizens from cradle to grave, no

one left behind, no one left in want.

His justification is the ongoing war: 'A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for

revolutions, not patching."

But the Cabinet is now debating whether Beveridge's report should even be published at all.

Chancellor Kingsley Wood is strongly against it.

In a note to Churchill, he writes, "the time for declaring a dividend on the profits of

the Golden Age is the time when those profits have been realized in fact, not merely in

the imagination."

But Churchill feels that Beveridge's press campaign has left them with no choice.

On December 2nd, Social Insurance and Allied Services – the Beveridge Report – is published.

While the Cabinet has been debating, the British troops have achieved major victories in Africa

and Rommel is in full retreat in Egypt.

For the first time in three years, there is a chance that Britain will be victorious.

It means a promise of a better future is welcomed even more enthusiastically.

People queue a mile long at government bookshops to buy a copy, and within one month 100,000

are sold.

The content of the proposal is received with a lot of enthusiasm as well.

A survey of public opinion within a fortnight of publication shows that 86 percent of all

interviewees favor the proposal and so do 73 percent of all interviewed employers.

Politicians are less united.

The Labour party is of course in favor but the Conservative Party is split.

The younger MPs approve of it, while the older ones don't.

Churchill is in the latter group.

A day after the publication he writes to the Minister for Reconstruction Problems, William

Jowitt, that no promises about post-war plans would be made until a financial deal has been

negotiated with the United States.

The report also has an international audience.

The BBC broadcasts details on the report in twenty-two languages and copies are dropped

over the occupied territories.

About 50,000 copies are sold in the United States.

Professor A. Nicoll of the embassy staff of the British Embassy in Washington reports

on the American reaction:

"Not the least wonder will be at the everlasting stamina of the British people, probably the

only nation in the world which would even form such a plan while engaged in a war of

survival."

After the Christmas recess, the British Parliament will discuss the Beveridge Report in February

1943.

This will nearly break up the wartime coalition and it won't be until 1946, after a general

election and a new Labour government, before the key measures of the report are implemented

and the British welfare state is born.

Beveridge has picked up on a zeitgeist that seems to be running through the British people.

They don't want to go back to the old world after the war is won, they want a better one

to come out of it.

The war is a wake-up call, and the changes that society has undergone to survive has

kickstarted a process that will shape the post-war world.

Have look at my film about the health care criss that came with World War Two right here.

Make sure that we can keep up our work to present the past in hope of a better future,

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