Introduction

By the late 1950s, Titmuss had laid the foundations, intellectually and institutionally, of the field of Social Administration. This involved not just academic research and publication, but also engagement with the policy making process. None of this was unproblematic. Titmuss’s work took place in the context of the Conservative Party’s political dominance, with some of its more dynamic members laying out plans for a shift from universal to selective social services. Within his own department, Titmuss had prevailed in his struggle with Eileen Younghusband, but the process had been exhausting and demoralising. As to research, Abel-Smith was to record, in 1962, that the ‘funds channelled to us through the University are pathetically small and we can use them for little more than bibliographical research and pilot studies’ – hence the need for external funding. More positively, this chapter examines the origins and impact of two of Titmuss’s most famous works, Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, and The Irresponsible Society. The latter, in particular, reveals much of his state of mind in the late 1950s, especially in the wake of the Conservatives’ 1959 election victory.

Essays on ‘The Welfare State’

Titmuss’s first collection, Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, appeared in 1958. A second edition came out five years later, and included The Irresponsible Society. A third, posthumous, edition was published in 1976, and in his introduction Abel-Smith remarked that while the pieces were produced during Titmuss’s first decade at the LSE, ‘most of what he wrote then is still relevant to the study of social policy today’. Abel-Smith further claimed that Titmuss had only accepted the volume’s title ‘after considerable persuasion from his publisher’, and that the expression ‘welfare state’ appeared in quotation marks ‘to make it clear that this was not his own description of Britain’s social services’. He also briefly summarised the book’s contents, asserting that ‘The Social Division of Welfare’ was ‘the most influential essay Titmuss ever wrote’. Winding up, Abel-Smith reiterated the collection’s ongoing value, ‘essential reading for the study of social administration’. While society and social needs certainly changed, it was important to ‘develop a deeper understanding of social need and social action’. In so doing, it was ‘critical to identify the really important questions’.