The Lord Beveridge | |
|---|---|
 Beveridge in the 1910s | |
| Member of Parliament forBerwick-upon-Tweed | |
| In office 17 October 1944 – 15 June 1945 | |
| Preceded by | George Charles Grey |
| Succeeded by | Robert Thorp |
| Majority | 7,523 (74.8%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1879-03-05)5 March 1879 |
| Died | 16 March 1963(1963-03-16) (aged 84) Oxford,Oxfordshire, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse | |
| Parents |
|
| Education | Charterhouse School |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Occupation |
|
| Known for | Work towards founding theWelfare State in the United Kingdom |
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge,KCB (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist andLiberal politician who was aprogressive, social reformer, andeugenicist who played a central role in designing the British welfare state. His 1942 reportSocial Insurance and Allied Services (known as theBeveridge Report) served as the basis for thewelfare state put in place by theLabour government elected in 1945.[1]
He built his career as an expert onunemployment insurance. He served on the Board of Trade as Director of the newly createdlabour exchanges, and later as Permanent Secretary of theMinistry of Food. He was Director of theLondon School of Economics and Political Science from 1919 until 1937, when he was elected Master ofUniversity College, Oxford.
Beveridge published widely on unemployment andsocial security, his most notable works being:Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909),Planning Under Socialism (1936),Full Employment in a Free Society (1944),Pillars of Security (1943),Power and Influence (1953) andA Defence of Free Learning (1959). He was elected in the1944 Berwick-upon-Tweed by-election as a Liberal MP; following his defeat in the1945 general election, he was elevated to theHouse of Lords where he served as the leader of the Liberal peers.
Beveridge, the eldest son ofHenry Beveridge, anIndian Civil Service officer and District Judge, and scholarAnnette Ackroyd, was born inRangpur, India (now inBangladesh), on 5 March 1879.[2]
Beveridge's mother had, withElizabeth Malleson, founded the Working Women's College inQueen Square, London in 1864. She met and married Henry Beveridge in Calcutta where she had gone in 1873 to open a school for Indian girls. William Beveridge was educated atCharterhouse, a leadingpublic school near the market town ofGodalming in Surrey, followed byBalliol College at theUniversity of Oxford, where he studied Mathematics and Classics, obtaining afirst class degree in both. He later studied law.[3]
While Beveridge's mother had been a member of theStourbridge Unitarian community,[3] his father was an earlyhumanist andpositivist activist and "an ardent disciple" of the French philosopherAuguste Comte. Comte's ideas of a secularreligion of humanity were a prominent influence in the household and would exert a lasting influence on Beveridge's thinking.[4] Beveridge himself became a "materialistagnostic", in his words.[5]
After leaving university, Beveridge initially became a lawyer. He became interested in thesocial services and wrote about the subject for theMorning Post newspaper. His interest in the causes of unemployment began in 1903 when he worked atToynbee Hall, asettlement house in London. There he worked closely withSidney Webb andBeatrice Webb and was influenced by their theories of social reform, becoming active in promotingold age pensions,free school meals, and campaigning for a national system oflabour exchanges.[6]
In 1908, now considered to be Britain's leading authority onunemployment insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb toWinston Churchill, who had recently been promoted to the Cabinet asPresident of the Board of Trade. Churchill invited Beveridge to join the Board of Trade, and he organised the implementation of the national system of labour exchanges andNational Insurance to combat unemployment and poverty. During theFirst World War he was involved in mobilising and controlling manpower. After the war, he was knighted and made permanent secretary to theMinistry of Food.[7]
In 1919, he left the civil service to become director of theLondon School of Economics. Over the next few years he served on several commissions and committees onsocial policy. He was so highly influenced by theFabian Society socialists – in particular byBeatrice Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909Poor Laws report – that he could be considered one of their number. He published academic economic works including his early work on unemployment (1909). The Fabians made him director of the LSE in 1919, a post he retained until 1937. During his time as director, he jousted withEdwin Cannan andLionel Robbins, who were trying to steer the LSE away from its Fabian roots.[8] From 1929 he led theInternational scientific committee on price history, contributing a large historical study,Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (1939).
In 1933, he helped set up theAcademic Assistance Council, which helped prominent academics who had been dismissed from their posts on grounds of race, religion or political position to escape Nazi persecution. In 1937, Beveridge was appointedMaster ofUniversity College, Oxford.[2]
Three years later,Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in the wartime National government, invited Beveridge to take charge of the Welfare department of his Ministry. Beveridge refused, but declared an interest in organising British manpower in wartime (Beveridge had come to favour a strong system of centralised planning). Bevin was reluctant to let Beveridge have his way but did commission him to work on a relatively unimportant manpower survey from June 1940, and so Beveridge became a temporary civil servant. Neither Bevin nor the Permanent Secretary of the MinistrySir Thomas Phillips liked working with Beveridge as both found him conceited.[9]
His work on manpower culminated in his chairmanship of the Committee on Skilled Men in the Services which reported to the War Cabinet in August and October 1941.[10] Two recommendations of the committee were implemented: Army recruits were enlisted for their first six weeks into theGeneral Service Corps, so that their subsequent posting could take account of their skills and the Army's needs; and theCorps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was created.[11]
An opportunity for Bevin to ease Beveridge out presented itself in May 1941 when Minister of HealthErnest Brown announced the formation of a committee of officials to survey existing social insurance and allied services, and to make recommendations. Although Brown had made the announcement, the inquiry had largely been urged by Minister without PortfolioArthur Greenwood, and Bevin suggested to Greenwood making Beveridge chairman of the committee. Beveridge, at first uninterested and seeing the committee as a distraction from his work on manpower, accepted only reluctantly.[12]
The report to Parliament onSocial Insurance and Allied Services was published in November 1942. It proposed that all people of working age should pay a weeklynational insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that this system would provide a minimum standard of living "below which no one should be allowed to fall". It recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the "five giants on the road of reconstruction" of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Beveridge included as one of three fundamental assumptions the fact that there would be a National Health Service of some sort, a policy already being worked on in the Ministry of Health.[13]
Beveridge's arguments were widely accepted. He appealed to conservatives and other sceptics by arguing that welfare institutions would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions out ofcorporate ledgers and onto the public account but also by producing healthier, wealthier and thus more motivated and productive workers who would also serve as a great source of demand for British goods.
Beveridge saw full employment (defined as unemployment of no more than 3%) as the pivot of the social welfare programme he expressed in the 1942 report.Full Employment in a Free Society, written in 1944 expressed the view that it was "absurd" to "look to individual employers for maintenance of demand and full employment." These things must be "undertaken by the State under the supervision and pressure of democracy."[14] Measures for achieving full-employment might includeKeynesian-style fiscal regulation, direct control of manpower, and state control of the means of production. The impetus behind Beveridge's thinking wassocial justice, and the creation of an ideal new society after the war. He believed that the discovery of objective socio-economic laws could solve the problems of society.
Along withAlbert Einstein, Beveridge was one of the sponsors of thePeoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly (PWCA), which took place in 1950–51 at Palais Electoral,Geneva, Switzerland.[15][16]
He was also one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting aworld constitution.[17][18] As a result, for the first time in human history, aWorld Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt aConstitution for the Federation of Earth.[19]
Later in 1944, Beveridge, who had recently joined theLiberal Party, was elected to theCommons in a by-election for theBerwick-upon-Tweed seat to succeedGeorge Charles Grey, who had died on the battlefield inNormandy, France, on the first day ofOperation Bluecoat on 30 July 1944. During his time as a Member of Parliament he was prominent in theRadical Action group, which called for the party to withdraw from thewar-time electoral pact and adopt more radical policies. He lost his seat at the1945 general election, when he was defeated by theConservative candidate,Robert Thorp, by a majority of 1,962 votes.
Clement Attlee and theLabour Party defeatedWinston Churchill'sConservative Party in thatelection and the new Labour Government began the process of implementing Beveridge's proposals that provided the basis of the modern Welfare State. Attlee announced he would introduce the Welfare State outlined in the 1942 Beveridge Report. This included the establishment of aNational Health Service in 1948 with taxpayer funded medical treatment for all. A national system of benefits was also introduced to provide "social security" so that the population would be protected from the "cradle to the grave". The new system was partly built upon theNational Insurance scheme set up by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer and futureLiberalPrime MinisterDavid Lloyd George in 1911.
In 1946, Beveridge was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Beveridge, of Tuggal in the County ofNorthumberland,[20] and eventually became leader of the Liberal Party in theHouse of Lords. He was the author ofPower and Influence (1953). He was the President of the charity Attend (then the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends) from 1952 to 1962.[21]
Beveridge was a member of theEugenics Society, which promoted the study of methods to 'improve' the human race by controlling reproduction.[22][23][24] In 1909, he proposed that men who could not work should be supported by the state "but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood."[25] Whilst director of the London School of Economics, Beveridge attempted to create a Department of Social Biology. Though never fully established,Lancelot Hogben, a fierce anti-eugenicist, was named its chair. Former LSE directorJohn Ashworth speculated that discord between those in favour and those against the serious study of eugenics led to Beveridge's departure from the school in 1937.[26]
In the 1940s, Beveridge credited the Eugenics Society with promoting thechildren's allowance, which was incorporated into his 1942 report. However, whilst he held views in support ofeugenics, he did not believe the report had any overall "eugenic value".[27] ProfessorDanny Dorling said that "there is not even the faintest hint" of eugenic thought in the report.[28]
Dennis Sewell states, "On the day the House of Commons met to debate the Beveridge Report in 1943, its author slipped out of the gallery early in the evening to address a meeting of the Eugenics Society at the Mansion House. ... His report he was keen to reassure them, was eugenic in intent and would prove so in effect. ... The idea of child allowances had been developed within the society with the twin aims of encouraging the educated professional classes to have more children than they currently did and, at the same time, to limit the number of children born to poor households. For both effects to be properly stimulated, the allowance needed to be graded: middle-class parents receiving more generous payments than working-class parents. ... The Home Secretary had that very day signalled that the government planned a flat rate of child allowance. But Beveridge, alluding to the problem of an overall declining birth rate, argued that even the flat rate would be eugenic. Nevertheless, he held out hope for the purists."[29] 'Sir William made it clear that it was in his view not only possible but desirable that graded family allowance schemes, applicable to families in the higher income brackets, be administered concurrently with his flat rate scheme,' reported theEugenics Review.[30]
Beveridge married the mathematicianJanet Philip, daughter of William Philip and widow of David Mair, in 1942. They had worked together in the civil service and at LSE, and she was instrumental in the drafting and publicising of the Beveridge Report.[31]
He died at his home on 16 March 1963, aged 84,[2] and was buried inThockrington churchyard, on the Northumbrian moors. His barony became extinct upon his death. His last words were "I have a thousand things to do".[32]
Beveridge Street in theChristchurch Central City was named for William Beveridge. It was one of 120 streets that were renamed in 1948 byPeter Fraser'sLabour Government of New Zealand.[33][34]
In November 2018,English Heritage unveiled ablue plaque commemorating Beveridge at 27 Bedford Gardens inCampden Hill, London W8 7EF where he lived from 1914 until 1921.[35]
University College, Oxford's society for students studying and tutors involved in the study ofPhilosophy, Politics and Economics was renamed the Beveridge Society in his honour.[36]
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Director of the London School of Economics 1919–1937 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Vice-Chancellor of the University of London 1926–1928 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Master of University College, Oxford 1937–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forBerwick-upon-Tweed 1944–1945 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Baron Beveridge 1946–1963 | Extinct |
