The Welfare State in Britain since 1945, Rodney Lowe
Title: The Welfare State in Britain since 1945
Condition: WELL READ
Author/s: Rodney Lowe
Edition/Year: First 1993
Publisher: Macmillan
Pages: 382
From the cover:
What was the Welfare State when it was created in the 1940s? How has its nature changed? Did it, as its creators hoped, provide a successful solution to those weaknesses in British society which had led to mass unemployment and poverty in the 1930s? Or did it, as its recent detractors have claimed, stifle individual enterprise and thus accelerate Britain's relative economic decline?
These are some of the questions which this book, the first full historical account of welfare policy in postwar Britain, seeks to answer. It traces the development of policy through the period of so-called consensus between 1945 and 1975 and then the years between 1976 and 1990, when state welfare came under ideological attack. A clear assessment is made of the relative successes and failures of each area of policy: employment policy, social security, the National Health Service, education, housing and the personal social services. A guide to competing theoretical approaches to welfare policy is also provided, together with sufficient statistical evidence to enable readers to form their own independent judgements.
Rodney Lowe is Reader in Economics and Social History at the University of Bristol. He has published widely in the broad area of twentieth-century British history, with a recent emphasis on postwar Britain.
