Introduction

The 1970s was an extraordinary decade for British social work with repercussions that have decisively influenced its subsequent development. The decade opened with social work being rewarded with its own state agency, with social work and no longer medicine as the lead profession. It ended with a nationwide strike of social workers in targeted areas of the country. It was a decade of unbelievable optimism for social work, but also the stuff of nightmares. At the beginning of the 1960s, New York social workers remarked on the hats and gloves worn by their visiting social work students from the LSE, all of whom were women and thought further noteworthy because they bought their own silver tea set with them on the liner from Britain. By the end of the 1970s the tabloids caricatured social workers as long haired, bearded Marxists or dungaree-wearing lesbians!

To explain these extraordinary developments it is necessary to recall the turmoil of this decade. The ‘people’ were active both in Britain, continental Europe and the US, some, such as students, more so than others. Fundamental questions stretching from foreign policy (especially Vietnam and then Chile and South Africa) to gender, ‘race’ and sexuality were being asked and leading to new mobilisations and awareness. Trade unions such as the National Union of Mineworkers demonstrated how organised militancy could bring down a government (the Heath government of 1970–74). The people were not only active but they were confident. Social work was not immune from these convulsions of protest and questions whether it concerned the oppression of women, blacks, workers, or gays and lesbians.

The British welfare state that had enjoyed a period of unparallelled growth since 1948 became a significant site of action. By the 1970s it provided employment for thousands of new graduates emerging from an expanded higher education system following the creation of the polytechnics. State social work was a case in point with the creation of local authority social services departments which demanded thousands of new workers. In the nine years between 1967 and 1976 the number of social workers employed in local authority social services grew from 6,063 to 16,523 (HMSO, 1972/76).