Pete Alcock

Why citizenship and welfare rights offer new hope for new welfare in Britain

This article outlines the prospects for new political strategies for state welfare in Britain in the 1990s, based upon the notion of citizenship and the idea of right to welfare as alternatives to the Thatcherite appeal for a private market in Welfare provision. The failure of post war state welfare provisions, which has been exploited over the past decade by Thatcher ism, was in large part a product of their failure to recognise the rights of consumers of welfare services. A commitment to guaranteed rights to welfare, coupled with democratic participation in the delivery of welfare services, could be the basis of a universal and popular appeal for renewed support for a different form of state welfare in the future. The development of welfare rights work over recent years provides an (incomplete) model of how such a strategy could be articulated in practice.

Welfare Rights and Wrongs: The Limits of Local Antipoverty Strategies

Outline This article discusses the development of local authority anti‐poverty initiatives in Britain over the last two decades, setting them in the context of previous targeted anti‐poverty activity in this country and in the United States, and focusing in particular upon the important role played by welfare rights within local anti‐poverty work. The article also describes in some detail the initiatives in the welfare rights field undertaken by Sheffield County Council in the 1980s as part of its more general commitment during this period to challenging poverty and deprivation in the city and improving welfare services. It is argued that Sheffield provides an example of many of the strengths, and weaknesses, of the welfare rights theme within local authority anti‐poverty action; and that from this lessons can be drawn for the role of welfare rights in future anti‐poverty initiatives here and elsewhere. In conclusion the more general limitations of local anti‐poverty strategies are discussed, contrasting ...

The end of the line for social security: the Thatcherite restructuring of welfare

At the end of a decade in which major changeshave been made troughout all aspects of social and economic policy, it is now becoming increasingly clear that the underlying aim of Thatcherism hasbeen to challenge the social democratic or liberal democratic notion of the interventions. welfare state, and to replace the welfare state with the opportunity state. Althugh this has not been ensively consistent strategy, nor one free from contradictions and setbacks, it has nevertheless involved clear shifts in welfare policy. This has led to the introduction of major changes in social seucrity proivions and more importunity in the political and ideo logical rationale which underpins this.

Take-up campaigns: fighting poverty through the post

This article is a critical review of the increasing number of Take-up Campaigns being run by local authorities in the 1980s in order to increase the levels of benefit take-up within their area. It outlines how these campaigns have developed as a pan of the growing welfare rights work which is now so much a feature of the British benefit system: and discusses how, after some initial problems, they have become more sophisticated and successful in their ap proach. There are, however, inherent limitations within the achievements to be made through such campaigning; these are summarised and explained, and a plea made for a more general campaign for the reform of benefits themselves to be a central feature of future local take-up initiatives.

Socialist security: where should we be going and why?

Social secutity reform is very much on the political agenda at the moment -put there, unfortunately, by a gevernment who have demonstrated themselves to be prepared to cut the leyels of basie income support in order to meet economic targets. Theri actions have, however, created space for the populatrisation of alternative measures for changing the basis of income support in Britain and have placed the need for a socialist response clearly in the left’s court. This article is an attempt to survey the context of proposals for social security reform, to look at some of the problems of the major proposals for reform and to suggest the basis for a socialist response. It is hoped that it will stimulate further debate on this important issue in the pages of CSP ans elsewhere. Social security is now by far the largest item of state expenditure in Britain, expected to reach around £40,000 million in 1984/85. It directly effects the weekly incomes of over one third of the population and indirectly, as I shall briefly discuss, conditions the fears and expectations of us all. In spite of this neither the present government nor previous post-war administrations have appointed cabinet ministers with sole responsibility for it. What this government has done, however, is institute a series of supposedly far-reaching reviews into the current social security scheme under the broad control of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, Norman Fowler. These are due to report in Spring 1985, probably after the March budget. Fowler has called the reviews the most fundamental examination of social security since Beveridge. Given their piecemeal organisation, however, with separate investigations into pensions, benefits for young people, housing benefit and supplementary benefit, and the fairly limited nature of the questions which seemed to have concerned the members of the review teams, this seems something of an overstatement. Their recommendations are far more likely to revolve around a streamlining of current Supplementary Benefit entitlement and restriction of other benefits for the young and old and for housing costs, than any radical rebuilding of the whole social security system. * Socialist security is the campaign slogan of the Labour Social Security Campaign, the author is a member of the Campaign’s Executive Committee, but is writing here in a personal capacity. The criticisms and proposals discussed here are also taken up in more detail in the context of the politics and ideology of social security provision in a forthcoming book: Poverty and State Support (Longman).

The Fowler reviews: social policy on the political agenda

On Monday 3rd June 1985 the Government finally published the findings and recommendations of the reviews into the social security system carried out by four teams appointed the previous year by Norman Fowler, Secretary of State for Social Services (see appendix Although the teams were supposedly undertaking an independent review of the British welfare state according to Fowler ’the most substantial examination of the social security system since the Beveridge report forty years ago’ the careful selection of the review teams ensured that whatever the evidence received the proposals made were likely to broadly reflect dominant themes in the government’s philosophy towards welfare. This was confirmed by the fact that what was published was not a report of the findings of the review teams, but a Green Paper outlining proposals for reform of social security -proposals which had already been debated in cabinet and given final blessing by the Prime Minister and the Treasury. The Preface to Vol. 1 says:

Striking back for the empire

In Critical Social Policy No 8 (Autumn 1983) we published an extended, controversial review by Jock Young of The Empire Strikes Back: Race & Racism in 70s Britain (ESB) written by the Race and Politics Group at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University. The review aggressively and destructively dismissed the book’s analysis of complex issues such as the relation between race, gender and class, policing the inner city, Afro-Caribbean culture in Britain. It was the kind of review which is all too common; it distorted, caricatured and ignored much of the book and concentrated on airing the reviewer’s prejudices on some of the issues. Some of the CSP collective were very unhappy about publishing the review without comment. We hoped, naively and rather in the style of Pilate, that it would elicit a strong response from readers, which has not happened, with the exception of a mild riposte from Richard Johnson in CSP 9. This response is prompted now by reading What is to be done about Law and

The Social Economy and the Democratic State: A New Policy Agenda for the 1990s@@@Beyond Thatcherism: Social Policy, Politics and Society@@@The New Politics of Welfare: An Agenda for the 1990s?

Introduction - a divided and disillusioned people, Michael McCarthy personal social services, Michael McCarthy health, Judith Allsop housing, Nick Raynsford social security, Ruth Lister employment, Molly Meacher education, Miriam David criminal justice, Rod Morgan community care, Alan Walker private and voluntary welfare, Martin Knapp.

Book Reviews : Instead of the Dole: An enquiry into integration of the tax and benefit systems Hermione Parker Routledge (London and New York), 1989

last few years by Hermione Parker, based at the Sun Tory-Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines at the London School of Economics. Its history, and Parker’s interest in the area, go back further than this recent research project, however. For many years she worked with Sir Brandon Rhys Williams, the late Conservative MP for Westminster, on developing an alternative strategy for social security reform in Britain. This strategy is based upon the idea of a Basic Income (BI), a term adopted in 1981 to refer to payment of an unconditional guaranteed income to all individuals as a replacement for all existing benefits and tax reliefs. BI would thus be an alternative to the post war diet of National Insurance and means-tested benefits, based upon the Beveridge Report of 1942. Beveridge’s proposals for social insurance were challenged at the time of their publication by Lady Rhys Williams, and after that the torch was

Book reviews : Responses to Poverty: Lessons from Europe R. Walker, R. Lawson and P. Townsend (eds) Heinemann Educational Books, 1984, 377 pp

Comparative social policy is still an under-developed area of work from both orthodox and critical perspectives of welfare. In this context a book comparing social security provision in European countries is to be welcomed, and will immediately become a useful resource for comparative study and political campaigning. It is worth noting firstly, therefore, that there are some broad limitations to the scope of this book. In the Preface Townsend argues that explanations of poverty and policies of state support must be seen in the context of a worldwide, multi-national context in which massive inequalities are reproduced -graphically demonstrated in the ranking of countries according to Gross National Produce per capita on p. 16. The book, however, concentrates only on EEC countries, all of which are similarly wealthy by these international standards. In fact concentration is really narrower than this still, with extensive evidence only provided from three countries: France, Netherlands and West Germany. The theme of the book, as suggested in the title, is what, if anything, can we in Britain learn from existing social provision in the rest of EEC Europe? And the last chapter, by way of a review of the material presented, concentrates on just this question. The first two chapters provide the context for the detailed evidence which follows. In the first Townsend provides a theoretical discussion of the problems of definition and explanation; he stresses, not surprisingly, the need for a relative conception of deprivation and the need to recognise that particular national benefit systems are the product of the unique configuration of national politics and thus cannot merely be transported from one country to another. In the second, Walker provides a comparative overview of all nine EEC countries in terms of public expenditure patterns and attitudes to poverty there is much useful information in this chapter. The bulk of the book, however, is description of the policies of the three countries (and in one case Denmark also) in three areas: unemployment and low pay, family policy and support, and provision for the elderly. Each of these sections is preceded by an editorial overview outlining the major trends in each area and the points of similarity and difference between the three countries. Information in these chapters is fairly specific and I suspect that they will be read selectively by most readers. The final section is the chapter on lessons for the United Kingdom. It is probably the most accessible and interesting chapter of the book for British readers, though the lessons to be learnt are hard ones. Obviously comparisons between countries beg questions of the accuracy and comparability of measurement; but given this caveat the UK generally compares unfavourably. We are not a rich country, with a Gross Domestic Product per capita better only than Italy and Ireland, and social welfare expenditure as a percentage of GDP has declined relatively so that in 1980 we spent the least of all nine countries and, if anything, things will have got worse since then. On the question of relative standards of living Britain appears to be doing better, with lower proportions of people below 60 per cent and 40 per cent of average income than other countries, though it must be remembered that this average itself is a lower absolute standard. However, at the sharp end our treatment of the poor is generally the worst. There are larger numbers of people on means-tested benefits here, and the division between the ’deserving’ and the ’undeserving’ poor is a more pronounced feature of social security provision than elsewhere. The impact of this is tellingly revealed in the attitude surveys quoted by Walker in chapter two, where 43 per cent of the British sample thought that poverty was caused by laziness and lack of will power,