BRITISH LIBRARY 
OF POLITICAL AND 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE 



LONDON SCHOOL OF 
ECONOMICS AND 
POLITICAL SCIENCE 



--~ 

A 

J'WO SHILLINGS AND SIXPEN 



AUDREY HARVEY has spent the last five years dealing 
with social problems in the East End of London. 


~ABIAN TRACT 321 



THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 

11. Dartmouth Street, S.W.l. 
Note.-This pamphlet, like all publications of 
the FABIAN SOCIETY, represents not the collective 
view of the Society but only the view of the 
individual who prepared it. The responsibility of 
the Society is limited to approving the publications 
which it issues .as worthy of consideration within 
the Labour Movement. 

February, 1960. 



Preface 


A
A
S l am not an expert on any aspect of the Welfare State, but merely 
a worker in it, this pamphlet will have certain obvious limitations. It 
is not intended for reference, nor to be comprehensive. To make matters 
more unorthodox, and to increase my indebtedness to the Fabian Society, 
I am not a member of the Labour Party. I am a radical in search of a 

party. 
My job is to provide helpful answers to questions brought to me by 

members of the public. I work in one of the poorest districts of London, 
in a small office with a staff of two. During the past five years that office!has re~eived well over 20,000 personal enquiries, nearly all of which have 
involved Welfare State rights and obligations. But I have not been concerned 
with only one area. Research has taken me into many others ; and 
I cannot count how many thousands of conversations-! dislike the word 
'interview '-I have had with people dependent upon State provision and 
with those who still suffer great privation. With the rise in post-war living 
standards, such people are not ( representative of the working class in 
general, and although they are certainly to be counted in millions, they form 

1only a small minority of the population as a whole. But because minorities 
deserve special consideration and because this one is both scattered and 
inarticulate, it has seemed to me vitally important to try to speak for it. 

A high proportion of the people who bring me their questiens belong 
to what ls still termed the 'working class', in that they have been poorly 
educated and do rough, strenuous and sometimes dangerous work, for a 
weekly wage rather than a monthly salary. Most of the men are dockers 
or seamen or lorry drivers, or are employed in factories or on building 
sites; while their wives, if they work, are often office cleaners or factory 
hands or canteen workers. Many have done, or are still doing, the dirtiest 
work of the community. One grandmother was a laundress ih a workhouse 
and helped to wash the clothes of the people in the shelters during 
the bombing (' We often found bits of flesh and bone ') ; another has for 
years been contentedly employed ' on the lavatories ' ; one man has spent his 
life as a dustman ; another works in a slaughterhouse. These, and thousands 
llike them in the fundamental work they do, are people on whom the whole 
community depends. Yet there is a tendency on the part of more comfort, 
able and privileged people to look upon them as ' second-class citizens ' 
1 who are somehow less sensitive, physically and emotionally, than themselves, 
and less deserving of respect and consideration. This is reflected not only 
in the quality of the services provided for their welfare, but also in the 

attitude of many who administer those services. 


The people with whom I am concerned in this pamphlet have a further 
characteristic. They are poor. For while a small proportion of the men 
are now earning more than the national average wage1 (and high 
earnings are seldom regular), they are still poor in education, living

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space, opportunity and status. They are also, whatever their earnings, 
very far indeed from being insured against poverty, in the purely financial 
sense, when misfortune hits them . By the very nature of their employment, 
and as compared with white-collar workers, they are largely unprotected 
by private occupational insurance and welfare schemes. In other 
words, they have no shock absorbers-a position shared by roughly half 
the working population of this country. 

* 


Those of us who work an consultants to the public, or, preferably, 
as social servants, are often asked why so many thousands of people have 
not been able to deal with their own problems, as if this implies a lack 
of initiative and independence. But these people are not asking what, 
morally, they ought to do-that is their own affair-but what, practically, 
they can do; and their reasons for needing help are very simple. Not 
everyone, in our divided society, has knowledgeable friends who can be 
consulted simply by picking up the telephone; not everyone is aware of 
his or her Welfare State rights and obligations, knows where to lay hands 
on relevant printed information or, once found, to understand it-especially 
if, for instance, it is contained in a National Insurance leaflet with its 
necessary but confusing ifs and buts, its mysterious referenJ;es to 'contribution 
years ' and 'waiting days '. Again, not everyone, under our 
inequitable system of education, can read or write with any ease. Yet 
occasions increasingly arise when people handicapped in this way (and 
foreigners also) receive complicated forms which must be entered or official 
letters which must be answered, when they need help to state a case or 
to appeal against a claim or a decision, on any of which matters-and 
many others-their whole future and that of their families may depend. 
Perhaps most important of all, not everyone knows whether a problem 
needs the advice of a solicitor and, if SO, what forms of subsidised legal 
advice are provided and how these can be obtainep. 

Here, then, are some of the needs for which no official provision is 
made. The individual, in the eyes of the State, has a bright, trained mind. 
He also ha great stamina and considerable leisure. For he needs both if 
he is to get his information direct from the fountain-head. At the local 
offices of the National Assistance Board he may have to wait his turn on 
week-days among 200 or more other applicants, if the district is a very 

1 £13 lis. 9d. gross a week including overtime and bonuses. The averagefor women in April, 1959, was only £6 17s. 7d.; and the overa11 average in the 
manufacturing industries, including boys and girls, was £11 Os. 6d. (Ministry CJ/
Labour Gazette, August, 1959.) 


poor one; and he will not be admitted on Saturday mornings unless his 
enquiry is extremely urgent. These offices, like many others, including 
those of the Ministry of Pensions and National fnsurance, normally hut 
on week-days as early and inconveniently as 4 p.m. The enquiring citizen 
has not yet been seen, officially, as needing a ~ocal centre for co-ordinated 
information and help which is open to him, at least occasionally, after 
working hours. Yet, looked at purely from the economic point of view, 
this would save an incalculable number of working hours which are now 
spent trailing from one office to another, often miles apart, and in each 
repeating the same details to be respectively recorded at tremendous staff 
expense. 

But there is another equally important aspect which must be briefly 
mentioned here. The staff of such centres as already exist, notably Citizens' 
Advice Bureaux (since they are recognised by the Law Society and by many 
government departments), are better equipped to point out all the possible 
escape routes from family or personal disaster, than are the specialised 
services. And it is one of the salient anomalies of the Welfare State that, 
despite its insistence on 'the importance of the family', far more serviCes 
are provided for efficiently sweeping under the carpet the remains of a 
family after it has disintegrated than for preventing this disaster. Nor is 
it generally recognised that what is needed to prevent this is far less often 
solemn amateur psychiatry than helpful information and advice and, some-
times-in an emergency-just plain cash as a loan. Why do we assume 
otherwise when the same is also so in our own more comfortable world? 
And why do we pretend that we already have an adequate Citizens' Advice 
Bureau service when, because of lack of funds and local authority support, 
some London boroughs have not got a Bureau at all, some have been 
forced to shut down, less than 450 exist in the whole country, few of these 
can be kept open iilt those hours when they are needed most, and staff 
of the highest quality cannot everywhere be employed? 

* 


One of the purposes of this pamphlet is to draw attention, in Part 1, 
to many other gaps between need and provision, and to the resulting 
anomalies and pressures which affect ' ordinary ' people-those not mentally 
handicapped, chronically ill or classified as ' deviants '. Part 2 will show 
what can happen to a family when it is subjected to a number of these 
cross-pressures, falls through a succession of gaps, and batters itself against 
obstacles which should not or need not be there. Part 3 will be a commentary, 
with tentative suggestions for improvement. This is not to 
denigrate existing provisions which represent, in general, a tremendous 
necessary and acknowledged advance; but rather, to show the need for that 
advance to be consolidated 1 and continued if we do not want a society 
in which thousands of people still suffer, almost unnotic_ed, great hardship-
while, on the other side of the fence, money buys immunity. 

AUDREY HARVEY 


I. What Is Wrong ? 
T
T
HAT we have a divided society, which is rapidly becoming more sharply 
so, is painfully obvious. Such terms as 'top people', with its polite 
corollary ' second-class citizens ', are symptomatic, and would not have been 
accepted during the war. Then there was a feeling of common responsibility 
and of comradeship which later found expression in the setting up of the 
National Health Service and in the other overdue reforms of the post-war 
Labour government. It was a feeling which still reveals itself under conditions 
of particular or temporary stress-for instance, in a hospital ward-. 
but which even under the threat of total annihilation is fatally rare to-day. 

This may be partly due to loss of contact between people of different 
education and employment, different resources and ways of living; partly, 
too, to an over-estimation-encouraged by both the big political parties-
of the extent to which working people have benefited by the reforms. At 
any rate reaction has set heavily in, bringing with it pressure to chip bits 
off the services; while among the armchair critics of the Welfare State it 
is axiomatic that ' they '-meaning roughly the working class-' get too 
much done for them nowadays' while 'we' have to foot the bill. 

This idea overlooks the fact that only about 4 per cent. of the populfr-..--tion 
do not use the State services at all and do not draw family allo~ances, 
pensions or insurance benefits or apply for grants for the further education 
of their children at the State-subsidised universities. It neglects the fact, 
too, that it is chiefly the middle classes who have benefited from the 
provision of free medical services and from entitlement to a full retirement 

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pension after only ten years of contributions ; while anyone who helps 
working-class people to fill up forms for tax rebate soon realises that the 
allowances scarcely ever apply to them and favour, much more, the middle 
income groups and the middle-class way of living. 

But while it is obvious that taxation, and particularly indirect taxation, 
often hits the poor harder than the well-to-do-as do ·"-a wnal Insurance 
contributions-these are not the only payments which State-dependent 
families may have to make for essential services. Is it generally realised, 
for instance, that an assessment for legal aid,1 which entails an ex~austive 
investigation of means by an officer of the National Assistance Board, often 
amounts to more than the fees which a private solicitor would .charge? 
In High Court cases Cl.ssessments have frequently exceeded £100, and in 
County Court cases £50. Under the Legal Advice Regulations, 1959, a new 
misconception is already current: that there is a sliding scale of payment. 
But a sing]e person with a current net income above the absurd maximum 


1 A Bill is before Parliament to raise the income limit for legal aid and 
to reduce contributions. 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 


of £4 1 Os. a week, is totally excluded from the statutory scheme and must 
pay £1 for purely oral advice lasting not more than 30 minutes. And there 
is still no provision under the Act for legal aid in the magistrates' courts, 
where the need for it is extreme. 

On quite another side of life, there are asse sed charges for the home 
help service and the school meals service unless inability can be proved; 
there are high minimum charges for homeless people in welfare homes, 
and assessed charges for the care of children in children's homes and day 
nurseries; and for badly-off people, not receiving Assistance, there is the 
whole range of health service charges, from £3 for a surgical boot to £2 
for a doctor's report needed in an accident claim. Again and again, ' they ' 
are still forced to plead poverty, especially if several of these charges 
become payable concurrently. 

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING? 

This is not to suggest that the principle of paying for certain special ~U 

ervices is nece sarily a wrong one or that it is resented. The outstanding ·I f 
quality of the people 1 have met in the course of my job is independence. 
There is a pronounced loathing among families of low income of anything 
that smacks of charity, and the number of those trying to get something 
for nothing is, in actual experience, very small indeed. This is also the 
experience of the National Assistance Board. Its report for 1957 stated 
that only 65 men on as istance were prosecuted for neglecting to work 
when able to do so, and that there were only 750 prosecution , for fraud 
out of a total of over 1 t million people (excluding aependents) then receiving 
assistance, ' the general body of whom are perfectly hone t and straightforward 
in their dealings with the department'. 

This, however, is only one rather charitable way of putting it. It is 
far harder for the man without private means to get something for nothing 
than is generally supposed, and not only because he has no expen e account 
and cannot afford a professional financial adviser to check charges and 
claim rebates. Jf he fails to pay hi as essed charge for services provided 
he is liable for prosecution in the courts, and exi ting debts such as rent 
arrears are not normally taken into account in the as essment-even in 
the ca e of so-called problem families or of those who are termed mentally 
deficient. Indeed, the fact that some medical officer have di cretionary 
powers not to withhold personal health services because payment i not 
forthcoming, sums up the whole position. 

If the State begin to look like a urpri ingly evere parent, it will look 
hardly les o when some of it national insurance provisions are clo ely 
examined. How many people reali e, for instance, that if a widow drawing 
the niggardly lOs. a week pen ion marries again, and i again widowed 
within three year , she i ineligible for any pension at all? Or that when 
a man over 77 or a woman over 72 die ,1 no death grant whatever i pay


1 These age limits are progre si e: the Act pecifie men born before 1883 
and women before 1888. 


6 CASUALTIES OF 'THE WELFAI:U~ S'lA"l'Ji 

abJe towards their funeral expenses? Or that there is no grant, either, 
for a still-born baby, and only £7 lOs. for a child under three, whereas 
the normal grant for adults is £25? These anomalies, caused by rigid 
insistence on contribution conditions, are all the more remarkable in contrast, 
for instance, to Maternity Benefit, for here the contribution conditions 
are very lenient; what almost amounts to an apology is made by the 
Ministry for inability to cover polygamous marriages; and the basic 
principle is the health and peace of mind of the mother. 

Misconceptions about National Insurance provision can spring all too 
easily from one-sided political propaganda. When the retirement pension 
was raised by lOs. in 1958 the government did not, rather naturally, point 
out that for pensioners then receiving National Assistance (just over 
1 00,000) the rise was only 5s. ; and that if they had previpusly been receiving 
tobacco coupons, this pittance was, in effect, reduced to 2s. 8d. Last 
year's welcome 5s. increase for single adults rights this balance (without, of 
course, restoring a treasured comfort). But nothing has been done for the 
far greater number of badly-off pensioners who are either still ineligible 
for Assistance or, understandably, prefer independence; and it needs to be 
borne in mind that all National Insurance pensions, except for disablement, 
are taxable ; and that whereas unearned income does not at all affect retirement 
or widows' pensions, the former are invariably supject to the most 
stringent and unfair earning limits. Still more unfair, widows' earnings 
affect their pensions only if their husbands die naturally ; not in war or 
as a result of industrial disease or accident. And in spite of the recent 
raising of the earning limit ' about 20,000 widows with children will now 
have their allowances reduced, and about 1,000 (the really rich widows 
who dare earn £7 net or more) have their whole £2 lOs. extinguished '.1 
What is more, a widow's pension rights are affected by such irrelevancies 
as her age and date of marriage. 

All these are hardships and anomalies affecting people in old age, 
bereavement, and widowhood. But what about in illness-the sort of illness 
which is usually nursed at home? Bronchitis, for instance, from which 
(according to a recent documentary broadcast) about 25 million working 
days are lost every year. Take a man who earns £12 a week. If his 
employer does not keep up his wages (and there are nearly 1,000,000 wage-
earners and their families dependent on sickness benefit on any average 
day2) , he can claim for himself and for his wife and one child the maximum 
weekly sum of £4 15s. In other words, and since no family allowance is 
payable, his gross weekly income drops overnight by the considerable sum 
of £7 5s. If, therefore, he is not to ask for National Assistance, his wife 
must go out to work, at the very time when she is most needed at home-
always provided that, if the child ·is not old enough for school, she can get 

1 Lena .Ieger. M.P., The Ohserver, 26th AprjJ, 1959. The government proposed 
last October to relax earnings limits a little further. 

2 Peter Townsend, Con viction, 1959. 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

him into a day nursery. But she must not earn more than £2 a week, 
otherwise her husband will lose his 30s. allowance for her. On·, the other 
hand no allowance is made for extra fu 1 or for doctor's prescriptions a·t 
ls. for each item. And it is only too likely that, with the present government's 
encouragement, the family will have hire purchase commitments, 1 
which are not taken into account by the National Assistance Board-even 
where a court order is already in force. 

The worry which all this imposes on an ill man is hardly likely to bring 
his temperature down. And his worry begins from the first moment of 
illness. He will, for example, get no benefit at all for the fir t three days 
unless he is afterwards ill for twelve day within a period of thirteen weeks. 
Yet within those first three days-so often the worst-he must ask his 
doctor for a 'first certificate ', fill it up and end it off. Only if thi is his 
first claim since July, 1948, is this rule relaxed and a sensible period of three 
weeks allowed. What is more, he has not bought freedom or privacy with 
his heavy weekly insurance contribution. He must not do 'anything ' (un specified) 
calculated to retard his recovery, or any work for which 'remuneration 
is or would normally be paid '.2 If he does, and a Ministry inspector 
catches him at it-about 600,000 home visits are made every year ;-his 
sickness benefit can be suspended for six weeks. And on top of all this, 
there is nothing to stop his employer from sacking him while he is ill. Tn 
fact this frequently happens. 

GOING ON ASSISTANCE 
This hardly looks like State indulgence and plainly 1t IS not insurance 
in the proper sense of the word. In 1958 the National Assistance Board4 
had to make 1,119,000 weekly allowances to supplement inadequate pension 
and benefit rates, and this represented no less than 68 per cent. of all 
allowances in payment. 
We know, therefore, that over a million people in this Welfare State \ 
were living below subsistence level for this reason alone, and were granted .· 
assistance. We also know that for 780,000 of all assisted people the! 
minimum rates of assistance were considered by the Board to b~ insufficient, 
since this was the number of discretionary allowances made, averaging 
7s. 1d. a week, for extra fuel, special diet and other requirements, in 
addition to which 152,000 single payments for shoes, clothing and bedding 
had to be provided for people in the most extreme need. 
These facts clo not precisely tally with the axiom that ' poverty has 
been abolished '. But if we can feel little complacency about the numbers 

--------------·-·--


1 The national hire purchase debt now repre3ents roughly £16 1 Os. for every 
man, woman and child in the country. 

2 National Insurance Leaflet 16. 

3 Annual Report Ministry of Health 1957. 

4 Nationa.l Assistance Board Annual Report 1958. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 


of the poor or the extent of their relief, since the average amount of 1 all 
weekly allowances, covering a total of 2,361,000 assisted people, was only 
27s. 9d., we can feel even less about the incalculable number in bitter need 
who did not apply for help. The fact that only 66,000 on unemployment 
benefit were regularly assisted, in a year of heavy unemployment, is indication 
enough that reluctance to apply is widespread and is by no means 
confined to old people. 

Since the work of the National Assistance Board earns so much praise 
in high places and from both the big political parties, why is there so much 
aversion from seeking its help? In Widows and Their Families,! a sociological 
survey, the author notes this aversion as being marked and quotes 
one widow with five young children as saying, 'I hate the thought of the 
place. I feel really degraded. They give you the impression that you're 
begging'. How can it be otherwise? Even if the officers are kind and 
tactful, as they so often are, the applicant is, in fact, pleading poverty; and 
since that poverty must be checked, he must be visited at home and asked 
questions which, to the sensitive, are often embarrassing, and which may 
involve relatives and other people living in the house. 

The price of application is, therefore, the surrender of personal privacy 
and a strong deterrent is the fear that, even when this price is paid, assistance 
may not be forthcoming. ln 1958 341,000 applicants were refused,2 
because the Board considered that they were not in need. This, however, 
does not necessarily mean that they were not destitute. The Board's figures, 
although not broken down , certainly include-as a matter of observation-
a number of men whose unemployment benefit had been suspended, which 
by no means always implies a misdemeanour, and who had no resources 
whatever. 

Another matter which causes hardship is the Board's policy of not 
assisting a man until the second week after he leaves his job, even if he 
has a family and is a low wage-earner; and it seems to be little known 
that the Board treats family allowances as income and deducts them . in 
full. This is done because the Board makes its own alJowances for children; 
but few mothers-and there are many deserted wives and unmarried 
mothers entirely dependent on National Assistance-find these adequate 
for bare necessities; and where the new rates are concerned the government 
has not been exactly generous: in none of the three age groups for 
children under 16 is the increase more than 3 . a week, and for the under-
fives it is 1s. 6d.3 

Finally, there is the Board's policy in making rent allowances. Although 
the vast majority of rents are met in full, there were, according to the 
1958 report, 19,000 assisted householders without a wage-earner ' able to 

1 P. Marris, 1958. 
2 National Assistance Board Annual Report, 1958. 
3 Moreover, since the increases were made, the index of retail pnces has 


risen by 0.8. due to increased prices of food and coal, 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

take responsibility for part of a relatively high rent', whose rent was not 
met in full. This arbitrary power to use discretion downwards means 
that people can be, and are, assisted at less than the statutory rate and 
below subsistence level. The assumption seems to be that people of low 
income can readily find cheaper accommodation. But it will be seen in 
the next section how completely unjustifiable this policy is in relation to 
rent decontrol and to the housing shortage. 

RENTS AND HOUSING 

The one expense on which no family, under financial pressure, can 
afford to cut down is rent, whether this is paid to a private or a local 
authority landlord. (Out of 14-15 million dwellings in this country, 3-4 
million are let by local authorities and 6-7 million by private landlords.1) 
Yet inclusive rents have risen very sharply in the last three years, leaving 
few family budgets unaffected. In 1957 alone, 1,369 rating authorities 
out of 1,467 increased their rate poundage ; many local authorities raised 
their rents, and more have done so since; and above all the Rent Act 
came into force. So much publicity has been given, with every justification, 
to the rise in rents of properties decontrolled under the Act because of 
their relatively high rateable value, that comparatively little comment has 
been made on the fact that the inclusive rents of controlled properties, in 
London at any rate, have in many cases been doubled.2 Again, where there 
is a new and therefore decontrolled tenancy there is no rent limit, however 
low the rateable value ; and in areas of extreme housing shortage outrageously 
high rents are being obtained. 

I have come across many cases in London where two unfurnished slum 
rooms previously let at 15s. a week are now being let to new tenants t 
35s.-indeed £2 to £3 is often charged when there is no bathroom and only 
a shared outdoor lavatory. And it follows that if a family takes such a 
tenancy in order to escape from overcrowding or homelessness, any misfortune 
to its breadwinner such as illness, accident or unemployment must 
soon throw it into arrears or on to National Assistance, always remembering 
that the N.A.B. may not meet the rent in full and that, where rooms 
are unfurnished, the Rent Tribunal is normally powerless to help. 

But rent is by no means the only worry which families, as new tenants 
and unprotected by agreements, are now enduring in increasing numbers. 
The landlord need not hold himself responsible for any repairs, but he 
can hold the tenant responsible, and evict him for non-compliance, or 
indeed for any other reason and at only four weeks' notice. Such landlords 
are not even legally obliged to obtain a court order for possession. 
Many cases of eviction therefore go unrecorded. 

1 The Ministry can supply no figures, and estimates by housing experts differ 
by as much as t million. 

2 Hansard, Vol. 607, No. 128, Col. 660. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

Families still in possession of controlled tenancies, and there are abot t 
4 million houses .left in control, are far better off in that they are properly 
protected against overcharging and eviction. But here the question of 
repairs is often a very serious and grinding worry. Although the Rent Act 
has enabled conscientious landlords to repair their properties, there are 
far too many quite unscrupulous landlords, particularly those operating as 
limited companies, who never meet their tenants, never answer their letters, 
and care for nothing but their very considerable profits. We do not yet 
know, and we urgently need to, how many landlords are dishonouring their 
formal Rent Act undertakings to carry out repairs, even after rent has 
been abated ; and how many families are being left to live in houses seeping 
with damp, with rotting floor-boards and every other conceivable defect 
including 'temporary' ceilings put up during the war. The number cannnt 
be computed by the number of certificates of disrepair issued (35,000 is 
the most recent figure given by the Minister), because in the case of a 
lapsed undertaking, under which no repairs have been done, no certificate 
is necessary. And there are still many families-one discovers them almost 
daily-who are either unaware of their rights under this or other Acts, or 
are too frightened to make use of them. Indeed, with the possibility of 
further decontrol, this fear is not ill-founded. 

Of course, if the rain is coming through the roof and having to be 
trapped in baths and buckets-as in many cases, often concerning old 
people, which I have come across-there is means of redress through the 
Public Health Acts, and the local authority can prosecute the landlord. 
But this procedure is monstrously slow. As the M.P. for Leeds South-East 
recently said: ' the inevitable lapse of time means that almost the whole 
of the winter goes by before the repairs are done '.1 Very often, too, the 
repairs are so badly done that the whole procedure has to start again 
within a matter of weeks. 

In spite of the Government's slum clearance drive since 1955, the 
target of moving 200,000 people a year had in no year been reached by the 
end of 1958 (when the figure, the highest for three years, was 159,9232); 
and it has been estimated that in England and Wales the present number 
of unfit houses is about 700,000.3 

There are also many deplorable homes, particularly in damp and 
insanitary basements, which the local authorities have decided to close as 
soon as the present tenants have left, but without being able to offer them 
the means of doing so because of the housing shortage. 

That shortage, in spite of the building of 3,115,660 dwellings of both 
types between 1945 and 1958, is extremely senous. It is the view of the 

Hansard, Vol. 607, No. 120, Col. 692. 
2 Ministry of Housing Report, 1958. Figures for England and Wales, including 
people moved not only from ' unfit ' but from ' other ' houses : those 
which got in the way of a redevelopment or road-widening plan. 

3 National Housing and Town Planning Council. 


C~SUALTIES OF THE \VELFARE STATE 

National Housing and Town Planning Council that ' the housing situation 
is generally as bad now as it has been since records were instituted '.1 
And while waiting lists are not, of course, an infallible measure of need, 
it has been estimated on the basis of a large-scale enquiry made by the 
same Council in March, 1959, that in England and \Vales there are about 
1,500,000 applicants for council housing, representing roughly 5,000,000 
people of all ages, of which about 2,000,000 are in urgent need; while in 
Scotland, and particularly in Glasgow, the situation is even worse. There. 
with a population of rather over a million, nearly half are housing applicants. 
The reasons for this shortage in all our big industrial cities will be 
discussed in Part 3. Here I am concerned with the human misery it causes. 

THE WAITING MILLIONS 
Conditions of extreme housing shortage produce the heaviest of all 
pressures on modern family life; and some of the worst of these spring 
from the rules made by local authorities with long waiting lists to manage. 
Some lists are operated on a fir t-comc-first-served basis plus a residential 
qualification. This means that a family coming into the district may not 
be admitted to the list for five years and stands little chance of rehousing 
for a further five no matter if, as in a case known to me, three generations 
of that family are sharing a single room. Similarly, if a family nearing the 
top of the list moves temporarily out of the district, perhaps because the 
husband's job demands this, it loses its place on the list much as if housing 
were a game of snakes and ladders. 
The system of points for hardship is much fairer in theory but often 
crueller in practice. A young couple making their first home in one room 
in a relative's house, have no hope of a home of their own from the council 
until they have a baby (which scores extra points); and they have a better 
chance the more babies they have-up to a certain limit. Yet there is 
often no room even for one baby, unless it sleeps on top of a chest-ofdrawers 
or in its parents' bed ; and, on its arrival, the husband may be 
forced to leave and either go into lodgings or back to his own parents. 
For young families tragically split in this way, there is not much consolation 
in being awarded extra points. Conversely, overcrowding also earns 
points; and so do illness, length of time on the list and disrepair. 
Under such circumstances who can tell what to do for the best? Have 
more babies and hope to escape from the misery quicker? Have none 
and live without hope in a furnished room? Cover up the cracked walls 
with paper and forfeit points for disrepair? 
In the comfortable world such agonising dilemmas simply are not 
known. Nor can it easily be conceived that a housing authority can, without 
warning, suddenly 'freeze' its waiting list as the London County 
Council did in 1956, and can then tell 158,000 families out of 160,000 on 
that list (53,000 in urgent need) that during the next three years they were 

1 A. R. Kerrell-Vaughan, Basic Problems of Housinf!. 1959. 


1" L CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

not only unlikely to be moved, but also that any new hardship they might 
suffer, apart from 'very serious medical condition', would not even be 
recorded.1 

This drastic measure, much regretted by the L.C.C., did not of course 
signify that rehousing was coming to a stop. The truth was, as the leader 
of the Council then explained, that ' of the dwellings becoming available, 
some 70 per cent. are needed to rehouse families displaced by slum clearance, 
road improvements, school buildings and so on. Few of these are 
on the waiting list, and it will take many years to clear this list '.2 

It is this last sentence which reveals what has long been going on behind 
the impressive fac;ade of council building, and not only in London but in 
all congested cities. Because local authorities have a legal duty to rehouse 
those whose homes they demolish (and only a moral responsibility to help 
the rest), they have had to abandon the principle of first aid to those in 
greatest need, and to move into those bright new flats thousands of families 
who had not asked to be moved, and whose homes happened to fall within 
a redevelopment plan or to border on roads too narrow for modern traffic. 

TRAGEDIES OF OVER-CROWDING 

Waiting-list families not only have to play second fiddle to much-
envied 'clearance' families: they themselves are not even moved in order 
of need. And as London has a heavier waiting list in actual numbers than 
any other city, London must again be the example. Since 1956 the L.C.C. 
has found it possible to rehouse 3,000 more waiting-list families than the 
2,000 originally contemplated. But these, unhappily, have not been composed 
exclusively of the most urgent cases. For whether or not such 
families could be rehoused has naturally depended not only on the amount 
of council accommodation availabie-much of it old and some of it without 
bathrooms-but also on its size. In 1956 the L.C.C. published the relevant 
facts and figures,3 and it passes imagination why there was so little public 
concern. For these showed that in the whole of metropolitan London, 
the L.C.C. had precisely 20 five-room dwellings available for the 5,300 
families needing them; a mere 100 dwellings with four rooms for no less 
than 31,100 slightly smaller families; and only 300 with three rooms for 
71,600 applicants. The figures for the one-or two-room dwellings were, on 
the other hand, far better. ' Indeed,' said the L.C.C., ' the chances of a 
person in the one-room queue are five times better than the person requiring 
three rooms '. 

What these figures do not reveal is the plight of the bigger families 
for whom even four bedrooms would not be adequate and who need a 

1 The same conditions now apply until 1963; and at the end of 1959 the 
waiting-list had risen to about t million applicants. 

2 The Observer, May, 1957. The L.C.C. estimates that this percentage is 
now nearer 90. 

3 Why So Few Houses for the Waiting List? L.C.C., 1956. 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

house rather than a flat. ·The proportion of local authority fiats to houses, 
now 36 per cent,1 hits them hard; and, as this proportion is much higher 
in congested cities, there are many families-tied by employment-who are 
positively bankrupt in hope of rehousing although they are richest in points 
for hardship.

Conversely, the present trend of providing single bed-sitting rooms 
for old people is not entirely satisfactory. Many old people long for the 
privacy of a separate bedroom; especially when they are ill, and find in 
such restricted space that they can no longer play their traditional part of 
looking after their grandchildren and of providing family meals. 

Shortage of family accommodation inevitably vitiates other kinds of 
State provision and sets up a need for others too. For instance, children 
with a chance to do well at good modern schools are often handicapped 
by overcrowded homes in which they can get no peace for homework. One 
boy, now seventeen and an apprentice, has had to share a bedroom with 
his parents (the only other room is a small kitchen), for thirteen years. 
That .he now needs psychiatric treatment is not altogether surprising. 

When marriages break down a further anomaly frequently arises. 
The State has long recognised the right of women to seek divorce or legal 
separation, and in fact allows them more grounds for separation than it 
does to their husbands. But because the husband is usually the tenant of 
the matrimonial liome and cannot be dislodged against his will, the wife 
often has to give up the whole idea of freeing herself from a cruel or 
adulterous husband because she and the children would afterwards be 
homeless. Even worse, if she does take proceedings-and this applie.s 
particularly to cruelty cases-she may have to do so while still undet the 
same roof as her husband. Mothers and children are not normally admitted 
to temporary welfare accommodation until a separation ordef' or divorce 
decree has already been granted, even if they are in justifiable fear of 
violence and recommendations for admission have been made by a probation 
officer and by the family doctor. 

In pre-war days, when a much lower proportion of families were flat-
dwellers, this situation was a good deal less grim. A young family, homeless 
for whatever reason, could more easily find a spare-room refuge with 
parents or relatives. But in poor districts to-day, street upon street of old 
family houses and cottages are being demolished. And here parents who 
temporarily take in married children often fall into an unsuspected trap. 
For when the time comes for demolition, the future of both families may 
depend, ludicrously but tragically, upon whether or not they have been 
sharing a cooker. If they have, and no separate tenancy can therefore be 
established, they will-if possible-be rehoused together, even if this is 
dead against both their wishes. Of course, from the housing· authority's 
point of view, this is much more economical than providing two separate 
flats. But that there should be no choice nor even any warning, is an ·un:speaking 
bureaucratic tyranny .of whicq the public is perhaps , unaware. 

1 Report of Ministry of Housing and Local Government 1958. · 


I /5

I' 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

Is it also unaware, one wonders, that when London families are due 
to be rehoused they often get only two alternatives, one of which may be 
in modern accommodation but out of reach of the husband's work, and 
the other in pre-1914 semi-slum property? Or that they must make an 
immediate decision on the first offer and so cannot weigh it against the 
second? Or that, at present, only the pre-1914 property can normally be 
offered to London families eligible for rehousing because of 'very serious 
rr_edical condition ' specifically due to bad housing? 

Local authorities are of course hamstrung by sheer lack of accommod:
ttion, at present made worse by having to complete de-requisitioning by 
~larch, 1960. Many of their housing and welfare officers are deeply 
concerned about the effect of harsh policies. But it is their medical officers 
who are often most frustrated. 

NO EASY WAY OUT 

What, for instance, is the good of their declaring a house unfit for 
human habitation-which is never done lightly-only to find that the 
family must go on living in it because no alternative can be provided? 
And what is the use of their insisting that overcrowding breeds every kind 
of ill, if housing authorities are forced to turn a Nelson eye on it?-just 
as they are forced to seem both deaCand heartless in face of appeals not 
only from the families concerned, but from family doctors, hospital 
almoners, probation officers and even Members of Parliament. 

A very curious present-day anomaly is that some of the worst cases 
of overcrowding now occur in council property where lodgers have been 
allowed or where the tenant's family has grown. In a single small district, 
for example, a mother and four children occupy one room in a council 
flat, a family of twelve (including married children and grandchildren) 
h~.ve three bedrooms between them, and a similar family of sixteen have 
four bedrooms. In this connection two facts are worth mentioning. The 
average floor space of local authority dwellings (the Ministry only quotes 
figures for houses with three bedrooms in its 1958 Report) has shrunk by 
150 square feet since 1951. Local authority rehousing policy does not 
always help either. In 1956 the L.C.C. told applicants that they could 
not take smaller accommodation than they really needed as ' the Council 
could not. agree to over-crowrr its dwellings in this way' but, should the 
size of an applicant's family increase before he was offered accommodation, 
' he would have to accept the size of accommodation for which he 
was registered '.1 

It is often suggested that overcrowded families do not really mind 

being so. This is a gross slander, tantamount to saying that poor and 

unfortunate people do not need and value privacy as much as any of us, 

and do not care about their children's welfare. Overcrowding causes real 

and protracted agony, all the more painful to witness because it is so often 

1 Whv So Few Houses jQI: the Waiting List?, op. cit. This was officiallyre-stated ·in 1959. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 15 

borne with stoical patience. But this misconception 1s understandable 
where it is based on a belief that most people could escape if they tried; 
and it is therefore important to point out why this belief is ill-founded. 

For families of low income, buying a house-the best way out-has. 
long been out of the question (unless they are sitting tenants) beca t<\e of 
the initial cash outlay. The government has reduced this by abolishing 
stamp duty on house. up to £3,500, and by enabling building societies 
and, to a lesser extent, local authorities, to make bigger loans. But these 
loans are still made on the lender's valuation, and the borrower still has; 
to find the often prohibitive difference between the sum lent and the 
purchase price. On an oldish house costing £2,000 this difference usually 
works out at roughly £400, while conveyancing and survey fees come to· 
about .£75-let alone the costs of insurance, removal and extra furniture 
and fittings-all of which puts the average and low wage-earner with young. 
children clean out of the running. He may scrape up a deposit on a 
caravan-and there are about 150,000 people in England and Wales, excluding 
gypsies, living in caravans ;1 but where there are young children this· 
is a desperate and quite inadvisable remedy. 

What other escape routes are there? Few landlords of furnished rooms. 
will take young children and, where they will, rents are usually prohibitive~ 
Few landlords of unfurnished rooms will let them without a premium, and 
all uch tenancies are now decontrolled. Few tenants with rooms to spare 
are .. allowed to sublet. Few tenancies crop up in the New Towns-only 
376 did so for London families in 1958-and these are allotted by the· 
Tndustrial Selection Board in accordance with the demands of industry 
and not on housing need. 

vVhat is least understood is that there is practically no hope £~:waiting-
list families to be moved out of the great overcrowded cities to 
areas that are less so. In 1958 only 105 London families could be moved 
in this way· and it is harder still for such people to make their own 
arrangements. Not only is there the problem of employment and the 
deterrent of decontrol : nearly every town in the country, except in areas 
of unemployment, has its own housing problem and its own stagnant 
waiting-list. 

Finally, working-class families are largely confined to working-class. 
districts. Private landlords and their agents tend to choose only ' nice ' 
families for ' nice' neighbourhoods where it is important that the social 
tone shall not be lowered. 

If all this were more widely publicised there might perhaps be less. 
criticism of people who, superficia1ly, seem lacking in initiative-but 
may in fact be quite unable to help themselves. Particular instances, however, 
are much more telling than generalisations, and what follows is the 
re•.....ent history of a London working-class family which, for reasons beyond 
its control, became dependent on State provision in the matter of hou~ingand 
in many other matters not so far mentioned. 

1 A. Wilson, Carav·ans as Homes, 1959. -. 


CASUALTIES OF THE \VELFARE STATE 

2. Steve 
I 
I 
did not meet the Stevens until October, 1958. They were then in such 
an exhausted state that to eros -question them about the past would 
have been inexcu able. Afterwards the dates of various events became 
blurred in their minds and these may be inaccurate. They have not only 
given me permission to tell their story, but have urged me to do so in the 
hope that this may help other casualties. 

When Joe Stevens came to see me he was 35. He had been brought 
up in a Hampshire orphanage; and \Vhat he particularly remembers of 
those pre-Welfare State days was having to eat potato peelings for three 
successive meals as a punishment for peeling them too thickly. Nhen he 
was 16 a recruiting sergeant visited the Home, gave Joe a shilling, and 
persuaded him to join up on boy service. The year was 1939. Joe served 
in the army for ten years. His was not a distinguished career. Although 
his testimonial on discharge was good, his report was only fair. He is a 
man given to reasoning why; and, worse, he has a sense of irony. 

In 1950 he married Margaret Potter-five years younger than himself, 
pretty, tough and warm-hearted, born and bred in East London. During 
the early part of war she bad been sent to the country, but had experienced 
the later bombing. Her uncle, who was living alone in a three-room 

L.C.C. flat, gave her and Joe their first home. This suited Margaret 
temporarily b cause her own family was living in the next door flat. She 
could go on looking after her parents, who were not strong, and her five 
young brothers and sisters. 
The Stevens had registered, on marriage, for a home of their own with 
their local borough council housing department; and they were there 
persuaded, on the birth of their first baby, three years later, to register also 
with the L.C.C. This disclosed them as unauthorised lodgers in L.C.C. 
property. On hearing that if they did not leave, Margaret's uncle would 
be evicted, they left at once. 

All that the L.C.C. could offer was accom 1odation for Mrs. Stevens . 
and the baby in an institution at Putney, which meant complete separation 
frr'm her husband and family. But just as she was setting off with the 
pram, a neighbour told her of two rooms which had unexp ctedly become 
vacant. One of these was only suitable for a boxroom and the place was 
damp, but it was a bolt-hole. The Stevens stayed there until 1955 when 
tJ-:ey obtain d a sc ·vice tenancy with an East London doctor who used the 
house only for morni1 g and evening surgery. Mrs. Stevens' responsible 
job was to be at hand at all other hours of the day and night to a 1swer 
the telephone. She also did the c1eaning. Her husband went on ·with 
his regular ''mployment as a crane~-.Iri ver in the docks, earning about £15 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE TATE 

a week. But although they were both earning the;r were able to save very 
little for, by this time., 11ey had two child.rcn, had taken in two more--relative 
of M:rs. Stevens-to live with them, and frequently had her younger 
brothers and sisters to meals and bought their clothes. They were never 
in a position to buy a house of their own. 

TH.LJ BREAK-UP BEGINS 

In 1955 Margaret Stevens had a still-born baby. The previous year 
her mother had died, and the following year her father died also. Under 
+hes..., successive hocks her health broke down, and when, in June, 1957, 
she was taken to hospital, sr e was found to be suffering from tuberculosis. 

Although another housekeeper had to be installed, the doctor let Joe 
Stevens stay on in one room. At first he tried to keep his daughters-
then aged four and three-with him. He paid a woman to look after them 
while he was at work, and he did their washing and ironing at night. But 
the woman neglected ~he children, and, in any case, it vvas particularly 
difficult for Joe to manage without help on Sundays: fir t he had to cook 
the dinner and then take the children with him to see his wife in hospital 
in Hertford hire. Thev. were not, of course, allowed in the wards and he

. 

·worried about leaving them on their own outside. Since they were T.B. 
contacts he did not like to ask friends to look after them. He was at a 
great di. advantage, then and later, in having no parents and no in-laws. 
The traditional system of family help for which East London is famous 
could.not work for him. 

Eventualiy he had to apply for the children to be taken into care, and 
they were placed in a Home in Surrey. Their father, who spoke very 
gratefully of the kindness of the staff, visited them there every Saturday ; 
and he continued to visit his wife in Hertfordshire every Sunday. To save 
time on these endless cross-country journeys, he sold his television set and 
bought, for cash, a second-hand car. But his difficulties increased wh n 
his wife had to have an operation for the removal of her lung, for then 
he needed to be with her more often than once a week. Worrying about 
her, he could not · eep his mind on his work. He had been with the arne 
firm for seven years but, rather than be Sctc 'ed for asking or taking time 
off, he left and took another job. Because this involved dirty and dangerous 
\Vork, hi hours were rather more flexible. 

By March, 1958, ,1argaret Stevens was ''ell enough to be discharged, 
after nine months in hospital. But her husband could not take her back 
to the doctor's house and could .find no other home. She waited a1 other 
month and then, unable to bear longer separation from her family, she 
assured the doctors that she would have somewhere to live. It fa.~t, her 
uncle had applied to have her and her husband temporarily a authorised 
lodgers, since he was stil living alone, but the L.C.C. r fu -ed this-pro,)ably 
on grounds of future overcrowding, since the Stevens, once established, 
would certainly have a plied to have their ch1ldren home. 


I 

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CASUALTIES Of THE WELFARE STATE

I ~ 

Rather than be parted, the Stevens lept in th ir car-and slept in jt,. 
in all. for six we ks. The fact that Mr . Stevens had no better ~helter was. 
known to the local chest clinic, which she was attending. It was a1 o 
kn wn to th housing department of the L.C.C. and to the 1 cal Labour 

M.P. to whom Joe Stevens appealed. The borough council housing department 
was unable to help because the family, through having previously 
found its own adequate accommodation, had lost its place on the waiting 
li t. 
The case was put up to the L.C.C. Medic' 1 Officer of Health in the 
hope that the family could be rehoused on preferential health gro~nd . B t 

a. Mrs. Stevens' infected lung had been removed, she was no longer actively 
tubercular-and therefore ineligible. 
Sleeping in the car was made more wretched than necessary by 
su picious neighbours, and the Steven took to leaving it at 6 a.m. and 
hanging ab ut in cafes until it was time for Joe to go to work. Margaret 
spent most of the day calling on friends in the hope of hearing of empty 
rooms. 

After six weeks in the car, Mrs. Stevens was so exhausted that her 
hu band appealed to the police on her behalf for shelter. She was directed 
to the L.C.C.'s reception centre for homeless women in South London ; but 
the admitting officer told her that it was no fit place for her, as it wa much 
used by pro titutes and there was a danger of infection . 

. -Joe could not thin r where else to take her. Then his mind went back 
to the war and to the long hours he had spent at Waterloo Station sitting. 
or. a bench waiting for troop ·trains. These two went there and sat on a 
bench. After several hours, Margaret said she might be better off in the 
car where at east she cou1d lie down. But by then the buse and LUbes had 
stopped running. They walked from Waterloo to East London and got 
back into the c2.r. 

It was then that Joe Stevenr decided that they mu t leave London,. 
although this meant giving up his job. He decided to try to get work on a 
fruit farm in Kent, and to look for a cottage. 

\VHO CARES? 

Throughout that drenching summer of 1958, from June un.til the end 
o[ Sept mber, the Stevens lived in a series of huts and sheds, moving from 
farm to farm. For part of the time they lived in a cowshed and had to· 
shovel out the manure before installing themselves. The cattle troughs were 
!JSeful for storing food, and they used packing cases for tables and chairs, 
and collected wood for fires. '\Ve felt like proper outlaws', Joe said later. 
' It was okay for me, but I was scared for .iviargaret. \Vith only the one-
lung and all that damp it wasn't right. There's only a certain amount the 
human frame can stand. But I reckon nobody but me cared whether he 
lived or died '. 

-

Bccau. e of the incessant rain they could not earn enough to live on, 
and Joe \vas forced to ask for National Assistance. 'When you like work 


1

CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 
19 

d

and have always had it, it comes hard begging for charity and being taken 

;e 

for a waster'. He always laughed when making these remarks. They were 

c, 

not expressions of self-pity but, rather, of the irony of his situation. s,
Since the start of this nomadic life the Stevens had visited their tS 
c hildren less and less frequently, and paid for them less regularly. Apathy 11 
had set in and subconsciously, perhaps, they had begun to feel that they ~t 
were owed something by society, and that a man who has served his y, 
country for ten years, including six years of war, deserves at least a roof. >e 
In any case it is always hard to pay for separation from children when .d 
this is a source of misery an.d not a convenience-a fact not always af>pre-[d 
ciated by the authorities. p. 
The official attitude towards the Stevens at this time, and in discussion le

afterwards, was very curious. They were regarded almost exclusively from 

n-

the point of view of their behaviour towards this or that department. Mr. 

er 

Stevens, for instance, had not replied to a questionnaire and that was 

4 

hardly very helpful '. It was ' no concern of the department ' if he had :::e 
been moving about and had not received the questionnaire. 
e, 

I 

Mr. Stevens himself found this attitude enraging and entertaining in-1e 
equal parts. But now he and Margaret were faced with a new problem. 
As their elder daughter was now five, and as the Home could not cater for 

nt

children attending school,· she would have to be separated from her sister. 
td

Rather than this, their parents asked to have both children with them, 
although they felt thar life in a hut w.Guld be a poor exchange for the nt 

ld

comfort, and even luxury, of the Home. 

I '•

When the hopping season was over the family returned to London and 

ek

managed to find one room in a slum house rented by a very dubious family. 

h.e
Here all four of them had to sleep in one bed. 

ne 

Joe immediately set about trying, yet again, to get his family rehoused. ke 
His case was again referred to the County Medical Officer of Health, thi 
time by a member of the L.C.C., and was most sympathetically considered. 

But owing to the acute housing shortage, the L.C.C. had, in 1958, only 250 
dwellings reserved for cases of ' very serious medical con ition ',1 and it had 
already received over 3,000 urgent applications "for these from doctors. 
Unless it was found that Mrs. Stevens' health had seriously deteriorated, nt 

Jff

5he would still be ineligible-since there was, and is, no preventive re


sk

f 

10UStng. 

of 

~. Anyone seeing Mrs. Stevens at this stage, instead of merely looking 

he

tt her case-card, would have been appalled by this decision. She was not 

I 

e )nly alarmingly thin and pale but wa~ quit~ beyond caring what might or 

I 

1 

' night not happen next. She was wtth dt~culty persuaded to attend a 
ad 

r. :hest clinic where she was found to have gamed one ounce, but to be far 
e 
>elow norinal weight. She was given a card to get herself X-rayed at a 
as

e tospital in her own time. 

.e 
elf 

1, 

1 As, indeed, it now has annually. 

·k 


CASUALTIES OF TH.E WELFARE ·sTATE 

, Meanwhile Joe Steve':ls could· not find a job, and the money realised 
on selling ·his car (which had broken down), had been spent in a fortnight-
part of it on food for his landlord's hungry· children. He again had to ask 
for National Assistance, and this revealed to the Board that his landlord, 
who was also on Assistance, was receiving rent. Joe was suspected of 
revealing this deliberately and told to get out-with threats of violence. 
As he had no tenancy in law, he had neither time nor protection. 

This was reported to the L.C.C. Welfare Department and Mrs. Stevens 
and the children-but not their father-were accepted for Part 3 accommodation 
at Newington Lodge, Southwark, an ex-workhouse and chiefly 
an old people's home. There they were allotted a room of their own after 
one night in the Night Shelter dormitory with other mothers and children. 

AT NEWINGTON LODGE 

Within a few days Mrs. Stevens was X-rayed, with positive result, and 
her husband was asked to give his permission for the children to have anti-
tubercular B.C.G. injections. But as they had already had such injections 
within the last 18 months, and as he was unsure that this was known, he 
felt that to repeat the dose might be dangerous. It was not, he said, 
explained to him that there would be no danger. And he was told by the 
welfare authorities that he was being unco-operative, and that this would 
affect his chances of being rehoused. What seems not to have been appreciated 
is that he was an intelligent man trying to act as a responsible father. 

Joe Stevens, himself brought up in an institution, was not at first critical 
of the physical conditions at Newington Lodge. He felt grateful that his 
wife and children had been given shelter. And although it came as a shock 
that their beds had neither sheets nor pillow-cases, that there was no plug 
in the bath and no brush in the lavatory, he was far more concerned, and 
so was his wife, about their separation from each other, the danger to their 
children of dysentery, of picking up bad habits from ' rough ' children, 
and about the fact that there was no means of keeping them from straying 
into the street and down to the shops and cafes. Even so, Joe thought that 
the lack of a sick-bay and of a nursery or playground could only be due 
to lack of L.C.C. funds-until he discovered that some families were being 
charged· ·£4-£5 a week, according to number of children and means. The 

L.C.C. must, he thought, be doing well out of the mothers, especially since 
they were required to clean the place 'Without reduction in fees. He had 
no idea that many of the mothers were either unwilling or unable to meet 
their charges, but he was soon to realise how easily this situation could 
anse. 
He had found it impossible to get a crane-driver's job either through 
the Labour Exchange or by direct application; but he had managed to get 
an unskilled factory job at £9 a week and was living· as cheaply as he could, 
in a doss-house run by a voluntary organisation. Here he slept in a 
dormitory with down-and-outs. Many h~q filthy habits and stol~ from 
each other. Many, too, were homosexuals, and Joe found their approaches 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

' humiliating'. This accommodation was costing him 28s. a week for bed 
and breakfast. It was fairly near his work but far from Newington Lodge 
where he visited his family every evening. Fares at lls. 8d. a week, 
National Insurance at 9s. lld., meals out at 35s., left him (without cigarettes, 
drinks, haircuts, newspapers or laundry), £4 15s. 4d. The charge for his 
wife and children was £3 lls. 6d. a week. He might have managed if all 
they had needed was soap, towels, washing powder and a little pocket 
money. But they badly needed extra food. Their last meal of the day, 
at 7 p.m., consisted of tea and either biscuits or stale grocer's cake. Joe 
was not going to see them go hungry. The only solution that he could 
see was to leave his job and try to get another at a higher wage. He did 
not realise that, if he found one, the charges for his family would go up. 

From then on he spent his days tramping about London, often in the 
rain, urgently searching for work. He wore his shoes out and found himself 
walking on his socks. This forced him to ask the W.V.S. for another 
pair. He was given a note to take to the nearest National Assistance office 
where he was taken for a tramp. 'The bloke there started sneering at me, 
and I was so choked I nearly knocked his block off. Instead of that I 
made him hear about Margaret getting ill. When I'd done, he said he 
was really sorry and fixed me up with some boots '. 

As he had 'voluntarily left his employment', Joe's unemployment 
benefit was suspended. He had applied for National Assistonce, but had 
been assessed as a single man, pending enquiries. He made no complaint 
about this. 'They can't be expected to believe a chap who turns up and 
says he's got a wife and kids in a rest centre. They've got to check up '. 
But this meant that Margaret was left without the statutory lOs. a week 
spending allowance. She did not get this for over a month, although she 
had applied for Assistance herself. She said: 'The chap there asked me 
how many husbands I had. I don't think they ought to speak to you like 
that'. 

HOMELESS AND HOPELESS 

Meanwhile Joe was becoming more and more desperate. ' It went 
through my mind to chuck the whole thing up, turn my back and go off 
on my own. When I went to see Margaret she naturally used to ask 
couldn't I give her a bit of money to buy shoes for the kids or a bit of 
wool to knit. I felt like I'd failed her altogether, and had done from the 
start. I knew she wasn't fit to be in a place like that. I thought how I 
used to be before I was married, without anyone depending on me. I 
wasn't a bad looking chap in those days-and I had plenty of girls and 
plenty of money in my pockets and had some rare good times'. 

His search for work went on. On one occasion he walked as far as 
Muswell Hill and from there to Camberwell. On another he found himself 
at Billingsgate Market and here, at last, he was able to do a morning's 


CASUALTIES OF THE \VELFARE STATE 

work. He pushed barrows for the fish porters at 6d. a time. It was boys• 
work. But he came away with 4s. 6d. to give his wife. 

_ Since he had been quite unable--while on Assistance at 59s. 6d.to 
pay the charges for his family, it was bitter to find him'self reproached 
by the welfare authorities for being in arrears, and worse to be told that 
this would go against his chances of rehousing. It was pointed out to him 
that a bad payer is unlikely to make a satisfactory tenant. In fairness to 
the authorities, however, it is unlikely that they were fully aware of his 
difficulties. On paper the case against him was strong: he had left his job, 
was in arrears, and had been unco-operative about his children's health. 
When interviewed he could not put his true case clearly. and there was no 
trained worker to do this for him. 

It was decided not to send this family to half-way-h:mse acc')mmodation 
where they would have been reunited in two rooms with communal 
cooking facilities, and from which they might ultimatelv be rehoused. 
Instead, Margaret and the children were sent to Norwood House, six mile5 
further out of London. This was an old remand home, redolent of Poor 
Law days, shabby and grim, with bare floors, hard chairs, kitc~en tables, 
no recreation room for the mothers, no proper facilities for laundry, nor 
even wardrobes or chests-of-drawers. Here they shared a cubicle with 
another mother and a child of eighteen months, one of fourteen other 
cubicles in a huge and desolate ward. When Joe saw them there, eating 
their supper of tea and dry biscuits, his anger overboiled. ' I reckon we've 
sunk as low as any family can sink', he said. 'And they call this welfare.' 

One thing he was determined about. He was not going to leave his 
family stranded here. He transferred himself to the nearest doss-house 
and tried to find nearby work. But as the area was largely residential and 
suburban this was hopeless. He continued the search in Central London, 
often walking the whole way out to Norwood in the evenings because he 
had not got the price of the fare. 

National Assistance was by then paying the family's charges, but their 
arrears, of about £10, remained. It was pointed out to Joe by the authorities 
that they had the power to evict his wife and children, but they were 
given a second month-the normal limit was three-in which to find a 
home. 

The Stevens had no intention whatever of agreeing, when their time 
was up, to their children going into care. They were outraged by this 
suggestion and Joe bluntly told the authorities so. But now they learnt 
what would happen if they failed to ' co-operate ' in this. Margaret and the 
children would be evicted, sent back to Newington Lodge for two or three 
nights, and then refused further admittance. This would mean sleeping 
out or in some unsuitable place from which her children would be taken 
from her. She had so far managed to laugh things off, but this time she 
was not remarkably successful. ' Nice idea, isn't it? ', she said. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

People under severe and prolonged strain cannot be judged by ordinary 

tandards ; and Joe, who had long ago lost the power of ' gathering his 
thoughts together', had simply not thought of asking his original employer 
to take him back. When this was suggested to him he at first refused, 
for he knew that in leaving suddenly he had left his firm in a difficult 
position. However, he was at last persuaded that if the circumstances of 
his leaving were explained, his black mark might be expunged. This job 
was undertaken for him by a Citizens' Advice Bureau to which he had 
earlier applied and with which he had kept in touch. His employers needed 
very little persuasion. They took him on as labourer and later gave him 
his old job back. 

THE TIDE TURNS 

The effect on Joe of being in work was that he felt, looked and sp ke 
like a man again. But the family still had no prospect of a home and their 
time was running out. The parents' feeling of insecurity had long since 
infected their children. The elder one frequently burst into fits of weeping. 
The younger one sat about, drooping and listless. Their mother somehow 
managed to keep going, chiefly by looking after other children while their 
mothers were at work. 

In December of last year a landlord called at the Citizens' Advice 
Bureau for advice on a tenancy problem. He was a rare type of landlord 
in that he preferred to put into his properties people in urgent need. He 
would have liked to have helped the Stevens, but he had no vacancies, had 
had none for months. 

Three davs later a vacancy occurred: two rooms in a slum tenement. 
Joe Stevens did not dare to believe this until he had both rent book and 
keys in his hand. The family moved in the same afternoon. In their relief 
it meant nothing to them that they had not a stick of furniture. Fortunately, 
blankets and bedding were provided by a church organisation; 
another, Jewish, provided beds; another, ex-service, hoped to be able 
to make a grant of about £12 for other furniture; and local people brought 
pots and pans. 

It is often thought that if ill-educated people are given practical help 
they will ' only take advantage '. Even when the Stevens were threatened 
with eviction from Norwood House, they resolutely declined such offers as 
they could not later conceivably repay. A day or two after their escape, 
remembering the interest taken by the staff of the Children's Home, they 
1et them know that their children were safe ; and they still call at the 
Citizens' Advice Bureau, not only to show that they do not look upon the 
workers there as mere officials to be dropped as soon as they have done 
their job, but to bring them scraps of information which might be useful. 

In February, 1959, the L.C.C. decided that, after all, this was a family 
which should have been helped; and three months after leaving Norwood 
House, the Stevens were rehoused in a good modern flat. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

3. What Ought to be Done? 
I
I
T might reasonably be asked whether the Stevens' case was not a very 

extreme one and therefore quite untypical. Perhaps the simplest answer 

is that the authorities concerned did not, at any stage, regard it as such. 

Basically, the Stevens' problem, like that of most families who fall through 

the gaps in the welfare state, was poverty. What they lacked was the price 

of rooms in a hotel where, during Mrs. Stevens' illness, a nurse could have 

been employed to look after the children, and from which Joe Stevens 

could have set about buying a house. They also lacked the social status, 

and the right accent, easily to carry out this programme. As things were~ 

they became dependent on State housing and, when that failed, on State 

welfare. This is an all too common sequence; and it may therefore be 

useful to consider possibilities for improvement under these two headings. 

The need for low-rented accommodation was described in Part 1. The 
chief reason for that shortage is the decrease in local authority building.l 
Since 1954, when the relevant figure was 200,000 dwellings, there has been 
an annual fall, until the figure was just over 113,000, and had therefore 
been almost halved, in 1958.2 The Minister allowed local autho~ities slightly 
to increase their building programmes in 1959, an increase estimated at 
2 per cent., 3 but irreparable damage has been done. And while it is true 
that, during the same period, private building increased from 88,000 dwellings 
to 124,0004-this has necessarily played only a small part in easing 
the shortage for low-income families. 

I 
I 
This situation has been the intended result of a series of government 
, measures. In 1955 the government restricted the housing expenditure of 
\local authorities. In 1956 it abolished the general needs housing subsidy; 
and in 1957 the Minister told all local authorities to revise their housing 

programmes or, in plain language, to build less, 'in the light of a 7 per cent. 

Bank Rate and a 6 per cent. Public Loan Board rate ' 5-as if these were 

natural phenomena. 

The excuse for these crippling measures-and it is significant that 
private building was not similarly restricted-was necessary economy at a 
time of serious inflation. Since this no longer holds, why has the subsidy 
not been restored? 

1 The increase in early marriages has been a contributory cause. A postwar 
rise in the population was to be expected. 

2 Annual Report, Ministry of Housing, 1958. 

3 Economic Survey, 1959, p. 59. 

4 Ibid. 

5 Hansard, Vol. 577, Col. 639. 


CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

The Minister has not even given an assurance that he will restore it, 
or that he will make it easier for local authorities to borrow money. 
Plainly what is needed is a government which puts the housing needs of the 
poor before those of the rich. This government has never pretended to do 
so. It strongly favours the private landlord and the private developer; 
and it has not even troubled to ascertain the approximate number of applicants 
for local authority housing.l 

It therefore cannot know what size of accommodation should be 
given priority in building, nor whether the present high proportion of one-
bedroom dwellings, 25 per cent., is realistic. No one would wish to limit 
accommodation for old people but, equally, no one would wish to penalise 
young children ; and since building always follows subsidy, this is another 
argument for restoring the general needs subsidy instead of retaining it, 
as at present, only in the interests of old and single people. 

Another great contributory reason for the shortage is lack of sites 
in congested cities, and this is an obvious argument for building new towns. 
None have been planned under the present administration. On the contrary, 
the L.C.C.'s most necessary plan to build a new town for its waiting-list 
families was endlessly frustrated by the government before permission was 
granted. A reversal of this trend seems badly needed and also much greater 
economy of existing space. Even in London, where the problem is so acute, 
countless small sites and bomb gaps, where 'in-filling' would be feasible, 
have been left vacant ever since the war. Many of them could be used 
to rescue families capable of paying an economic rent and, where this is 
not so, special grants or subsidies might reasonably be provided to local 
authorities or to housing associations. So far, it has simply not been 
thought worth while to do this. 

The space problem is madt; worse by lack of coherent policy and 
planning. When sprawling industries are induced to move out of congested 
areas, there is far too little restriction on other industries taking 
their place-often bringing their own workers with them ; and potential 
housing sites are much too freely given over to speculative office building 
(from which huge private profits are derived). This makes no sense at 
alJ, creating-as it must-a heavier influx of workers, denser traffic, a 
further need to widen roads, to displace more families from their edges, 
to tear down more sound and often decorative houses, and to delay the 
rehousing of waiting-list families in bitter need. 

I have already referred to the need for more new towns. But since 
many people prefer or need to live in cities, room must be found for them. 
In spite of the example of New York we have only now come round to the 
idea of building high, even in tightly green-belted cities and even where 
only distressing views would be blocked. At this moment we are still using 

------------·-·-·--------·~··=-~·~~~~ 

1 ,Hansard~ Vol, 607, No, 128, Col, 682, 


26 
CASUALTIES OF THE WELFARE STATE 

J 
precious sites in industrial areas for flats of only three storeys1 and maisonettes 
of only two. In some areas difficulties arise through density figures 
fixed in easier times. Of course high domestic building is not an ideal 
solution, apart from its expense. There is much to be said against boxing-
up families in flats at all. But at least this is better than destroying long-
established communities by forcing out young families from their home 
districts and leaving old people derelict in the cities, so that both are 
deprived of mutual support and become unnecessarily dependent on the 
social services. 

But building is by no means the only answer to the shortage. Private 
landlords, presented with the Rent Act, could surely be forbidden, in return, 

' to refuse their tenants permission to sublet, especially since this was one of 

·I the chief sources of additional accommodation envisaged under the Act. 
We might also follow the example of Holland where under-occupation of 
1 rented rooms is forbidden. This would be a great help to families with 
children, who need it most. 

MUNICIPAL POLICIES 

On the other hand, local authorities could do more to ease the 
shortage by arranging transfers and promoting exchanges at a less arthritic 
pace than many of them now do. And while there is gross overcrowding 
of much council property, many tenants are living in flats 
bigger-and more expensive-than they need. Local authorities might also 
make greater use of their powers to acquire and convert large houses for 
the big families who have no prospect of rehousing. A wider adoption 
of differential rent schemes would also be most helpful in discouraging 
the occupation of council property by those no longer needing subsidised 
rents; and it is baffling that so many housing authorities still oppose this. 
Why should they be more tender-hearted towards their better-off tenants 
(who, if they prefer to buy their own houses, now stand to benefit under 
the easier terms provided by the government), than to their poorest families 
whom they evict for rent arrears, and who have not the faintest hope of 
buying? 

Finally, there is the Labour Party's policy of municipalisation. While 
it seems clear that local authorities should be able to acquire certain. types 
of privately-owned rented property when it becomes vacant, so that they 
can place in it families in housing need at a proper and not an inflated 
rent, and can preserve houses now falling into decay through the negligence 
of private landlords, it seems equally clear that, whether or not they acquire 

' increased powers, their housing policies could in many cases do with an 
overhaul. It often happens, for instance, that a local housing authority 
evicts a family which then has to be temporarily accommodated by the 
local welfare authority, and ultimately may have to be rehoused by the 

1 These still formed 51 per cent. of the totq,l in 1958. Report of the Ministry 
of Housing, 1958, 


CAStJALTIES OF THE WELFAk.t S1"ATE 

authority which originally evicted it. Until housing and welfare join forces 
under all local authorities, as they are constantly urged to do by the 
government, more histories like that of the Stevens can only be expected. 

The experiences of the Stevens family in temporary welfare accommodation 
were, unhappily, quite typical. But many improvements are now 
being planned by the L.C.C., including the eventual closure of such unsuitable 
buildings as Newington Lodge and Norwood House, and the 
provision of more family accommodation to inClude the husband and father, 
so that in future London families may not be split at any stage of their 
homelessness. 

Although the standard of temporary family accommodation, as at 
present provided by some local authorities, is so low that it has been 

1

compared with that of refugee camps in Europe,the L.C.C.'s ·plan to 
provide it initially is a great step forward; and it is one which other 
responsible welfare authorities under the National Assistance Act, 1948, 
might usefully follow, since many of them make inferior provision without 
the excuse of comparable numbers to manage (and since accommodating 
the mother and children in an institution is far less economical). London's 
problem has always been the greatest and most complex. Since the war 
the L.C.C. has given shelter to well over 20,000 families2 ; and while the 
vast majority of these were Londoners, many were new arrivals from the 
provinces or from abroad. 

Certain homeless families are classed, either before or after coming 
into temporary accommodation, as problem families-usually because they 
have been evicted for rent arrears. Of course there are some families who 
have become demoralised by despair of one kind or another and who do 
behave-to use the official term-'in ways which are socially inacceptable'. 
But that does not necessarily mean that they are psychopathic or ' of low 
intelligence ' or ' emotionally immature ' ; it more often means that, in face 
of intolerable pressures, they have not proved superhuman. The Stevens 
just missed qualifying for the 'problem' status-their mental deterioration 
was insufficient. And in their case this was unfortunate, for it would have 
resulted in their being reunited in a special unit from which, after instruction 
in seemly behaviour and household budgeting, they would have been 
returned to society in a home of their own. 

Pride in such special units causes some welfare authorities to lay undue 
emphasis on the problem families in their care, while others use these 
families as an excuse for poor general provision. And largely because of 
this emphasis, all homeless families have been tarred with the same brush, 
so that even in the Younghusband3 Report, homeless and problem families 
are roughly grouped together, along with other ' social deviants'. 

1 Mrs. Joyce Butler, M.P., f!ansal'd, VoL 607, No. 128, CoL 758. 

2 On 1st January, 1959, there were 1,864 people in the L C.C.'s homeless 
f:.1mil y accommodation. 

:~ Report of the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local AuthorityHealth and Welfare Services, Para. 314. 


CASUALTlES O.F THE WELFARE S'tATE 

It is only too easy for whole groups of unfortunate people to be misjudged 
and misrepresented where there has been no adequate social research 
-a lack which, where homeless families are concerned, the Y ounghusband 
Report freely acknowledges. 

But those who have made any study of this subject, including an 
important welfare group, representing 47 statutory and voluntary organisations1 
agree that by far the greater number of homeless families become 
so through no fault of their own and are in no way irresponsible. To see 
the force of this it is only necessary to recall the reasons through which a 
family may innocently lose its home·: these include eviction from furnished 
rooms on the birth of a baby, or from unfurnished rent-controlled accommodation 
on the death of a widowed parent to whom the rent book had 
already passed ; from controlled or decontrolled property of which 
the owner has been granted possession for his own or his family's use; 
as a result of the transference of labour or the loss of a ervice tenancy-
as in the Stevens' case; or in an emergency such as fire or flood. 

On the other hand where failure to pay rent is the cause, the reason 
is usually extreme poverty produced by the financial cross-pressures 
described in Parts 1 and 2, which can afflict families in illness or unemployment. 
What seems to be needed here to prevent eviction is not 'skilled 
casework', which cannot produce the necessary cash or stay a court order 
for debt, but-in the absence of adequate National Insurance rates-a 
relaxing of National Assistance regulations. Where failure to pay rent 
has not been deliberate, and it very seldom is, there is surely a case for 
temporarily disregarding Family Allowances as a source of income, and for 
disregarding also, in full, any payments from a charitable or voluntary 
source. This applies even more strongly to .evictions of homeless mothers 
and children from welfare temporary accommodation-a monstrous fate 
which almost overtook the Stevens; for, under existing regulations no one 
could have giv.en them money, either to pay off their arrears or to buy 
extra food, without th'eir having to report this, as an increased income, to 
the Board.2 

THE }"'UNCTION OF NATIONAL ASSISTANCE . 

Many sympathetic N.A.B. officers find ingenious ways of getting round 
such regulations, but others are far Jess helpful. And the truth is that 
although the role of the Assistance Board, as the casualty department of 
the Welfare State, is of paramount importance, no one can tell-despite 
its admirable policy statements-what sort of treatment can be expected 
from it. 

1 The Women's Group on Public Welfare in association with the National 
Council of Social Service. 

2 Only the first 15s. of such payments can be disregarded by the Board. 


CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 

The trouble seems to be-and this goe for a variety of State provisions-
· that it has not been decided what the real purpose of National 
Assistance is. For years it has been assumed that this was to prevent 
anyone from falling below subsistence level. Yet the Board freely admits, 
though rarely on paper, that it sometimes assists at less than the statutory 
rate as an incentive to work or a disincentive to extravagance. But here 
it also admits that in the former case the applicant may, in fact, be unemployable, 
and that when an assisted family moves to more expensive 
accommodation, it is usually because of overcrowding and for the sake of 
the children's health. 

. 

One conclusion might be that the Board should in no circumstances 
use its discretion downwards. The contrary argument, that public money 
should in no case be mis-spent, depends for its validity on how ' mis-spent ' 
is interpreted; and in any case this argument is dispensed with by the 
Board, on grounds of expediency, in other matters: for instance, its officers 
are not trained to understand the disrepair machmery of the Rent Act, 
and this often results in assisted people paying more rent, with public 
money, than their private landlords are entitled to receive. 

In matter of under-assistance, and in many others, a very awkward 
truth has not yet been faced : that in penalising parents we very often 
penalise their children, as the history of the Stevens shows. This difficult 
problem is, however, made wor e than necessary because the people whose 
unenviable duty it is to take decisions, or to make reports, vitally affecting 
a fc..mily's future, are very often those not noticeably fitted to do so. Health 
visitors, for example, one of whose duties is to recommend families for the 
problem label, receive only one year's specialised training, and oftea confess 
themselves baffled by the simplest questions of rent or tenancy. The 
Younghusband Report showed that of 326 superintendents, matrons, 
wardens or deputies in welfare residential or temporary accommodation, 
70 per cent. had no recognised qualification and only ooe had a social 
science qualification. In the case of N.A.B. officers, who are civil servants, 
many have simply been drafted to the job, have not the slightest interest 
in · welfare, and would much prefer to have been sent to the Admiralty or 
some other govennment department. There seems to be a strong case here 
for special recruitment. 

People like the Stevens are better able to endure poor welfare provision 
wherever they meet with helpfulness in those administering the services, 
whether these are trained or not. The Younghusband Report repeatedly 
p@ints out that social workers suffer from long irregular hours, and too 
many people to deal with, and this in itself can result in impatience and 
discnurtesy. Again, the average age of social workers is high, and it follows 
that brought up in pre-Welfare State days of mass destitution and of soup-
distribution to the deserving poor, many of them still dispense what should 
be a right as if it were a charity, still cling to suspicious, authoritarian and 
patronising attitudes. Their low pay and lack of prospects for promotiondo not enc;oura~e them to llf1Q~rtak~ work which is not strictly within their 


30 CASUALTIES OF THE VVELFARE STATE 
. 
province. Thus, although any one of them concerned with the Stevens 

could have helped Joe to get his original job back, none did so. 
This, however, was not altogether surprising from another point of 
view. It is, unfortunately, no exaggeration to say that of the many social 
workers who knew of the Stevens' situation when they were homeless, 
four out of five expre'ssed not one word of concern or sympathy. It seemed 
I to be firmly fixed in t~eir minds that people who reach the stage of living 
in cars and cowsheds must somehow and most seriously be at fault. When 
pressed to specify that fault, however, they were quite unable to do so. 
Instead, one case-worker (in a statutory service) said that this was ' the type 
of family which just .sat back and expected everything to be done for it '


•

and that to do anything would therefore be inappropriate. When reminded 
that the Stevens had been in responsible employment and had on several 
occasions found their own accommodation, it was clear that this had been 
discounted. Achievements as compared with failures are rarely recordedJor remembered. And there is, in the social services, a terrifying tendency 
to blame unfortunate people for their misfortunes-if they clearly are not 
mad-while the s·tandards of conformity and virtue expected of them are 

stern beyond belief. 

SOCIAL ATTITUDES 

Whether it i.s right for social workers to see themselves as upholders 
of the moral code seems rather questionable. Still more questionable is 
the tendency of trained case-workers actually to avoid giving practical help 
and advice, and to adopt a would-be ps;chiatric approach. This attitude 
often results in total remoteness from existing social conditions. Thus 
one case-worker, concerned with the Stevens, gave it as her opinion that 
any family in real housing need is, nowadays, rehoused. This remoteness 
is a source of bitterness to people in trouble, and they suffer also from 
attitudes of class-superiority. For, in spite of many notable exceptions, it 
is rare to come across workers in the social services who appear to have 
asked themselves how they would stand up to situations in which people 
like the Stevens find themselves, whether their own records are entirely 
blameless, whether State provisions would be good enough for them, and 
how much they-as sane, private citizens-would care to be the objects 
of modern case-work. Indeed, if we are not to toler:.:tte two completely 
different standards of judgment and treatment in our divided society; the 
purpose of social work and the question of training for it seem to call for 
some reconsideration. 

In the earlier part of the Stevens' history, Joe's difficulties would have 
been ·considerably eased if he had known of the Home Help an~ Child 
Minder services. Such services are quite invaluable for preventing the 
n·eed for institutional care, with its personal miseries and vast expense. 
But not only are they, like many other exc~llent welfare provisions, far 
too little advertised for the benefit of the public (the B.B.C. might help 


ASUALTlBS Or' 'l'HE WELFAR E 1'ATE 31 

here)-the existence of some of them is not known to many workers in the 
specialised social services. This is another argument for more general and 
practical training. Again, because of the great complexity of provisions 
and regulations, the extent to which doctors and parsons can nowadays play 
their valuable and traditional part as family advisers. is very limited. 

What doctors and parsons and the more co-operative social workers 
are doing, in increasing numbers, is to refer people whom they cannot help 
to the local Citizens' Advice Bureau-where this is known to be of a high 
standard-and not only for legal advice. Thi free service, which is nonpolitical, 
non-sectarian and independent of State control, is in an unrivalled 
position to act as an intermediary between the authorities and the public. 
Such a service is essential in any democracy and ha a particular value 
where the standard of State education is low and where there is strong and 
growing bureaucratic control. 

But while this ervice can help people in a great number of practical 
ways and can pres a claim, as it did for the Steven , the one thing it could 
not do wa to get this family rehoused by the State. Perhaps because 
housing is not yet considered as a social service, the decisions of housing 
authorities-however arbitrary-are absolute and there is no machinery for 
appeal. Here and in a variety of actions of the State versus the individual, 
there is a need for an official intermediary, with appropriate powers, perhaps 
on the pattern of the Swedish Ombudsman; and where adequate appeal 
machinery exists there i a most urgent need in cases of poverty for free 
legal representation. 

The people of this country who insi ted on social reform in 1945 cannot 
have changed in any radical way and would, one ventures to think, 
still insist upon it if they could see with their own eyes what happens to 
our modern casualties. But these today are scattered, isolated, not on 
view. Which of us knows one of the two million people on National 
Assistance? Or has met one of the children, u ually of big families, who 
have to be treated for nutritional deficiencies-of which, in London alone, 
there are twice as many as before the War? 1 Who would guess that there 
is considerable medical evidence of semi-starvation among old people? 2 Or 
that, despite the claim that we have never been better off, the sickness 
benefit rate was worth more in 1911 than it is today? 3 

We have been deluded into thinking not only that we have already 
achieved a Welfare State-whereas improved tandards of living are due, 
rather, to full employment-but that it is second to none. Our National 
Health Service is still unrivalled, but in other matters we are falling behind. 
The Scandinavian countries are ahead of us in providing better old people's 

J Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Social Pathology, 1959. 
2 
lbid. 
3 R. M. Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State, 1958. 



tASUALnBs OF 'i'HE WELPAI.U!. StATE 

homes and up-to-date hospitals; New Zealand enables young families to 
buy their own houses by advancing Family Allowances. France does not 
invariably deny a family allowance to the first child of a family as we 
do ; Germap.y gives -better insurance coverage in illness and is spending 
half as much again on social security as we are. On housing we spend a 
lower prop'ortion of our income than all but three out of fifteen other 

•JEuropean countries1 ; and in education we cling to a system which su.s,tains 
class differences and thereby limits opportunities for the majority of 
children. 
An international contest for the highest standards of welfare is the 
only kind which makes any sense. Are we going to fall further behind 
and concentrate less on the prevention of suffering-here and in much 
poorer countries-than on methods of mass destruction and the promotion 
of private wealth? At a time of booming prosperity, it is not a question 
of cost but of care. 

1 Financing of Housing in Europe. Economic Commission for Europe, 
Geneva, 1958. Quoted by the National Housing and Town Planning Council, 
Basic Problems of Housing, 1959.) 


Recent Fabian Publications 


RESEARCH PAMPHLETS 


203 PRISON REFORM Now 
Howard Jones 2/6 
204 TOWN AND COUNTRY 

R. M. Stuttard 21205 
TRAINING FOR SKILL 
Gertrude Williams 2/206 
WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT THE ROADS? 

W. T. Rodgers 216 
207 PAYING FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT 
H. R. Parker 
2/208 
THE FuTuRE OF THE FAMILY DocroR 
Bruce Cardew 2/6 

209 THE UNIVERSITIES: A RoYAL CoMMISSION? 
Graeme Moodie 5I


210 A UNITED NATIONS PoLicE FoRcE? 

David Ennals 
2/


211 R ESTRAINING URBAN GROWTH 

J. B. Cullingworth 
3/6 
212 
TANGANYIKA IN TRANSITION 
Arthur Skeffington, M.P 4/


TRACTS 

311 A NEUTRAL BELT IN EUROPE? 

Denis Healey, M.P. 
116 

312 LAND NATIONALISATION-FOR AND AGAINST 

John Mackie, Harry Walston 
l/6 

313 DWELL TOGETHER IN UNITY 

John Hatch 
3/


314 CHINA : AN EcoNOMIC PERSPECTIVE 

Joan Robinson and Sol Adler 
t I 6 

315 COLOUR AND COMMONSENSE 

Kenneth Little 
216 

316 GOMULKA'S POLAND 

Lucjan Blit 
2/


317 THE FUTURE OF THE THEATRE 

Richard Findlater 
216 

318 COMMERCIAL TELEVISION-WHAT IS TO BE DoNE? 
Christopher Mayhew, M.P. 2 I319 
REFORM OF THE COMMONS 
Bernard Crick 316 
320 WHERE? 
Five views on Labour's Future 2/6 

• Printed in London by Devonport Press Ltd. (T. U.) W.l2 

•I 
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