William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge KCB was a British economist,
noted progressive and social reformer. He is best known for his 1942 report
Social Insurance and Allied Services which served as the basis for the
post-World War II welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected
in 1945. Lord Beveridge, considered an authority
on unemployment insurance from early in his career, served under Winston
Churchill on the Board of Trade as Director of the newly created labour
exchanges and later as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Food. He
was Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science from
1919 until 1937, when he was elected Master of University College, Oxford.
Beveridge published widely on unemployment and social security, his
most notable works being: Unemployment: A Problem of Industry, Planning Under
Socialism, Full Employment in a Free Society, Pillars of Security, Power and
Influence, and A Defence of Free Learning.
Early life and education Beveridge, the eldest son of Henry
Beveridge, an Indian Civil Service officer and scholar Annette Akroyd, was
born in Rangpur, India, on 5 March 1879. He was educated at Charterhouse, a
leading public school near the market town of Godalming in Surrey, followed by
Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he studied Mathematics and
Classics, obtaining a First in both. He later studied Law.
Life and career After leaving university, Beveridge
initially became a lawyer. He became interested in the social services and
wrote about the subject for the Morning Post newspaper. His interest in the
causes of unemployment began in 1903 when he worked at Toynbee Hall, a
settlement house in London. There he worked closely with Sidney Webb and
Beatrice Webb and was influenced by their theories of social reform,
becoming active in promoting old age pensions, free school meals, and
campaigning for a national system of labour exchanges.
In 1908, now considered to be the United Kingdom's leading authority on
unemployment insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb to Winston
Churchill, who had recently been promoted to the Cabinet as President 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
and National Insurance to combat unemployment and poverty. During the
First World War he was involved in mobilising and controlling manpower.
After the war, he was knighted and made permanent secretary to the Ministry of
Food. In 1919 he left the civil service to
become director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over
the next few years he served on several commissions and committees on social
policy. He was so highly influenced by the Fabian Society socialists – in
particular by Beatrice Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909 Poor Laws report –
that he could readily be considered one of their number. He published academic
economic works including his early work on unemployment and a large historical
study of prices and wages. The Fabians made him a director of the LSE in 1919,
a post he retained until 1937. During his time as Director, he jousted with
Edwin Cannan and Lionel Robbins, who were trying to steer the LSE away from
its Fabian roots. In 1933 he helped set up the Academic
Assistance Council. This 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 appointed Master of
University College, Oxford. Wartime work
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. 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 Ministry Sir Thomas Phillips liked
working with Beveridge as both found him conceited.
= Report on social insurance= An opportunity for Bevin to ease
Beveridge out presented itself in May 1941 when Minister of Health Ernest
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 Portfolio Arthur 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. The Report to the Parliament on Social
Insurance and Allied Services was published in 1942. It proposed that all
people of working age should pay a weekly national 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 'Giant
Evils' 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. 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 of corporate 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 as the pivot of the social welfare programme he
expressed in the 1942 report. Full Employment in a Free Society, written in
1944 expressed how this goal might be gained. Alternative measures for
achieving it included Keynesian-style fiscal regulation, direct control of
manpower, and state control of the means of production. The impetus behind
Beveridge's thinking was social 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.
Later career Later in 1944, Beveridge, who had
recently joined the Liberal Party, was elected to the House of Commons in a
by-election to succeed George Charles Grey, who had died on the battlefield in
Normandy, France, on the first day of Operation Bluecoat on 30 July 1944.
Beveridge briefly served as Member of Parliament for the constituency of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, during which time he was prominent in the Radical Action
group, which called for the party to withdraw from the war-time electoral
pact and adopt more radical policies. However, he lost his seat at the 1945
general election, when he was defeated by the Conservative candidate, Robert
Thorp, by a majority of 1,962 votes. The following year the new Labour
Government began the process of implementing Beveridge's proposals that
provided the basis of the modern Welfare State. Clement Attlee and the Labour
Party defeated Winston Churchill's Conservative Party in the 1945 general
election. Attlee announced he would introduce the Welfare State outlined in
the 1942 Beveridge Report. This included the establishment of a National 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 on the National Insurance scheme set up by Lloyd George
in 1911. In 1946 Beveridge was raised to the
peerage as Baron Beveridge, of Tuggal in the County of Northumberland, and
eventually became leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. He was the author
of Power and Influence. He was the President of the charity
Attend from 1952-1962. Eugenics
Beveridge was a member of the Eugenics Society, which promoted the study of
methods to 'improve' the human race by controlling reproduction. 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." 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 Director John 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.
In the 1940s, Beveridge credited the Eugenics Society with promoting the
children's allowance, which was incorporated into his 1942 report.
However, whilst he held views in support of eugenics, he did not believe the
report had any overall "eugenic value". Professor Danny Dorling of the
University of Sheffield says "there is not even the faintest hint" of eugenic
thought in the report. Dennis Sewell states that "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. '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 the Eugenics Review. Personal life
Lord Beveridge married Jessy Janet, daughter of William Philip and widow of
David Mair, in 1942. He died at his home on 16 March 1963, aged 84, and was
buried in Thockrington churchyard, on the Northumbrian moors. His barony
became extinct upon his death. His last words, as he sat up in bed whilst still
working on his 'History of Prices', were "I have a thousand things to do".
Works Unemployment: A problem of industry,
1909. online Prices and Wages in England from the
Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century, 1939. Social Insurance and Allied Services,
1942. Full Employment in a Free Society, 1944.
The Economics of Full Employment, 1944. Why I am a Liberal, 1945.
Power and Influence, 1953. Plan for Britain: A Collection of Essays
prepared for the Fabian Society by G D H Cole, Aneurin Bevan, Jim Griffiths, L F
Easterbrook, Sir William Beveridge, and Harold J Laski.
See also Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee's Health
Minister Beveridge curve
Contributions to liberal theory Liberalism
Socialism List of British university chancellors
and vice-chancellors List of United Kingdom MPs with the
shortest service List of Vice-Chancellors of the
University of London Resources
Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography, Oxford University Press,
1997. ISBN 0-19-820685-2. William Beveridge's archives are held at
the London School of Economics. Photographs of William Beveridge held by
LSE Archives Donald Markwell, John Maynard Keynes and
International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University
Press, 2006. References
External links Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in
Parliament by William Beveridge Sir William Beveridge Foundation
burkespeerage.com Spartacus Educational on William
Beveridge and The Beveridge Report Full text of the Beveridge Report
BBC information BBC Radio 4, Great Lives – Downloadable
30 minute discussion of William Beveridge
Catalogue of William Beveridge's papers at the London School of Economics
Cataloguing the Beveridge papers at LSE Archives