Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of photographs and sources
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Owning not othering our welfare
- Part One The legacy of the past
- Part Two The way to the future
- Afterword The future: a different way forward?
- Appendix One The family
- Appendix Two Research projects and related publications
- References
- Index
One - Setting the scene for welfare and social policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of photographs and sources
- Foreword
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Owning not othering our welfare
- Part One The legacy of the past
- Part Two The way to the future
- Afterword The future: a different way forward?
- Appendix One The family
- Appendix Two Research projects and related publications
- References
- Index
Summary
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
(Milton Friedman)… the welfare state has caused millions to live deprived and even depraved lives …
(James Bartholomew, 2013)If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are oppressing them.
(Malcolm X)The bad-mouthing of welfare
The UK welfare state has long had a poor press, but this probably reached its nadir in 2013. It was then that it was accused of colluding in mass murder. Occupying the lofty moral high ground was the Daily Mail, the tabloid newspaper which has the second highest sales, as well as being one of the most influential political institutions in Britain. Its front page headline described Mick Philpott, who killed six of his children by starting a house fire, as the ‘vile product of welfare UK’ (Dolan and Bentley, 2013). This was then picked up by right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes, who called the welfare state ‘Philpott’s evil accomplice’ (Guido Fawkes, 2013). We should remember that this is the same Daily Mail whose proprietor and editorials supported Adolf Hitler and Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists before the war, and which more recently had to pay damages to a Tamil hunger striker for falsely claiming that he secretly ate burgers during his 23 days without food (Jones, 2010) and invaded a memorial service being held for the uncle of the then Leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband.
This certainly was not always the way the welfare state was presented in the press. In 1948, heralding the new social security system, the Daily Mirror proclaimed: ‘We are leading the whole world in Social Security … Our State belongs to the people – unlike so many countries where the people belong to the state – Social Security converts our democratic ideal into human reality.’
Less predictably perhaps, The Times asked whether the next generation would be able to ‘reap the benefits of a social service State while avoiding the perils of a Santa Claus State’, concluding that, ‘it would be a grave mistake to overlook the deep feelings and sense of purpose and common humanity which all the new social services are trying, however imperfectly, to express’ (cited in Kynaston, 2008, 285).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- All our WelfareTowards Participatory Social Policy, pp. 13 - 28Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2016