The welfare state
Dick Stockford asks: what happened to the welfare state?
We have the best welfare state in the world; or perhaps we did, but surely if that were so, what follows can’t be us?
Education performance has dropped to twenty-third out of the twenty-six most developed countries, our health service is failing to meet the most basic targets of patient safety and care, our social security system has become an unwanted way of life for too many, housebuilding in the public sector falls in each successive year and homelessness rises, thirty per cent of children are overweight or obese, we have or had the highest level of births to girls under sixteen in Western Europe, sexual abuse and the neglect of children seem to be at record levels, our prisons are bursting with record levels of violence and drug taking and we are, not surprisingly, stressed and turning to overstretched GPs and even legal highs for relief.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this… was it? So, what has gone wrong and how did it turn out this way? You may be surprised to find that these problems stem from the very early days of thinking about these changes, when old-fashioned paternalism was a real force in the land.
The context
So, it’s not something recent? Well, taking the National Health Service as an example (which I know something about, having worked in it and the Department of Health), most people would say it’s about a lack of money or privatisation. I don’t think that is right or it’s that simple. As they say: ‘To every problem there’s a simple solution and it’s wrong.’
To get some more context on the subject, I went back to the birth of this great notion, not to the post-war Labour administration that laid down the legislation, but to the two towering dynamos who dreamed the dream in the first place. One was William Beveridge, who identified the five giants of squalor, idleness, ignorance, want and disease that he wished to see slain; the other was William Temple, who not only as a Labour Party member and Christian developed the moral and intellectual basis for the work but also found time to be Archbishop of Canterbury!
Temple’s contribution was founded in his profound determination to bring the love of God to all people. He recognised that in the dark days of world war two, when he worked on this, there needed to be a radical and prescriptive manifesto for a peacetime government to work from. So, in the winter of 1940 he arrived with 200 delegates, cold and weakened by war, at the Great Hall of Malvern College in Worcestershire.
The manifesto
The history created at this conference at Malvern College was Temple’s manifesto (he called them ‘middle axioms’) for the good society:
1. The nurturing of children in the material-immaterial experiences of life, including support for strong, loving and secure family life, with a high priority on marriage – including, if necessary, high quality child care provision, adequate income, and addressing the work-life balance of parents. Particular priority should be given to the first three years of a child’s life.
2. The commitment to education as lifelong learning in the knowledge of world ethics and religion, as of value in itself, linked to strong, rich cultural contexts, with skill acquisition only part of such processes.
3. Developing health as personal and communal wholeness, including as holistic lifestyles, traditional and complementary medicines, and including affirming the spiritual dimensions of life.
4. Recognising the importance of income and work for wellbeing, including affirming the principles of justice in the formation of prices and wages within and between nations.
5. Fostering care for and delight in the good stewardship of the created order, especially as environment, and paying unequivocal regard to its sustainability.
6. Promoting an ethical finance, including by subordinating financial systems to the personal and common good of all, and by encouraging modest lifestyles including thrift and addressing excessive debt – all to be located in and sustained by a movement from material to immaterial concerns in the development of wellbeing.
7. Promoting more egalitarian societies and ways of living, including the distribution of income, wealth and culture.
An egalitarian society
What’s obvious from reading this manifesto is its modernity. References to ethical finance, holistic life styles, lifelong learning, the importance of the first three years of life, and the importance of the egalitarian society indicate how comprehensive Temple’s commitment and ambition was. We now know the battles that the post-war Labour government had to fight with the medical profession to get the NHS onto the statute book and the vain hope that the giant of disease would be slain sometime during the fifties. The warmongering over the ideological direction of the state education system remains a writhing giant and ignorance is neither slain nor replaced by lifelong learning, and so it goes…
So, was it a fault of implementation? Politics, after all, is the art of the possible. Well, it certainly didn’t help that there was so much resistance from people who should have known better and should have looked less to their wallets and more to the good of society.
However, there still remains a problem. Interestingly, the parts of this manifesto that shout out for implementation in our stressed and divided society are the adjectives: holistic, complementary, ethical, egalitarian, sustainable, and yes, the spiritual dimensions of life.
This is not a failure of funding or implementation; it’s certainly not a fault of Temple’s conceit but it is a problem of design and attitude. This was a manifesto that was done-to or done-for rather than done-with. This was a paternalistic plan at a time when paternalism was very much the expected modus operandi. And this, in hindsight, is a critical oversight but one that Temple (as a Christian and perhaps as a member of the Labour Party) should have spotted.
The point is simply that if your aim is to achieve a good society and particularly if members of that society are to reap the benefits of holistic and equalitarianism approaches then they themselves have a big part in delivering it. They are the ones left to do the really heavy lifting, losing weight, getting fit, choosing good food options, getting involved in civic work, engaging in education, participating in workforce politics, and staying away from the fags and booze!
Inclusion and engagement
So, it comes down to inclusion and engagement. If we want a good society we are all in it together! We are not black boxes to be fixed by doctors, educated by teachers, or supported by social security. We have to believe we are valued, that our contribution is important and, when we make it, we will be heard. None of this followed from Temple’s work, although it could have done and wouldn’t he have seen it as Christian teaching if he’d recognised it? I think he should have!
So, he missed this, or maybe Beveridge did or maybe Attlee did or maybe we all did (and do) in the rush to get great ideas implemented; those who are the beneficiaries of these great enterprises have a part to play. After seventy-five years should we re-examine and re-vision this important work? If I am right it would be worthwhile not just to find where this went wrong but also to create a new manifesto for inclusion and engagement in our democracy. We would be stronger (and healthier) for it!
So, is there a new opportunity for Malvern College to spring to the fore again? I think so; we just need a William Temple!
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