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From the Golden to the Dark Decade, From Reforms to Isms and Ologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Extract

THE 1950s WERE A WONDERFUL DECADE FOR APPLIED SOCIAL science: for the belief that reason addressed to economic and social problems can improve the human condition. Compare the 1950s with the 1930s and ask how much of the improvement was due to Keynes and Beveridge. It is inevitable that a generation of debunkers should follow whose answer would be ‘not much’. But that would have seemed a strange conclusion in the 1950s; and the view of the 1950s was surely right. We had full employment in place of 10 per cent unemployment in the 1920s and nearly 15 per cent in the 1930s; and after the first years of post-war reconstruction, it was reasonable to attribute this to Keynesian demand management. We had a safety net through which relatively few fell into poverty; and this was Beveridge's social security and the welfare state.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1980

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References

1 Beveridge, Sir William, Peace by Federation?, Federal Tracts No. 1, London, Federal Union, 1940.Google Scholar

2 Ivor Jennings, W., A Federation for Western Europe, Cambridge, CUP, 1940.Google Scholar Other members of this constitutional committee were Lionel Curtis, Professor Goodhart, Wheare, K. C. (who wrote a Federal Tract entitled What Federal Government is, London, Macmillan, 1941) and Harold Wilson, J.; Otto Kahn‐Freund also wrote a paper for them.Google Scholar

3 London, Jonathan Cape, 1939. This developed the line of thinking of his Economic Planning and International Order, London, Macmillan, 1937.

4 See his ‘Interim Report on Economic Aspects of the Federal Constitution’, First Annual Report 1939–40, London, Federal Union Research Institute, 1940. He also wrote a chapter entitled ‘Economic Aspects of Federation’, in Chaning‐Pearce, M. (ed.), Federal Union, London, Jonathan Cape, 1940,Google Scholar which was reprinted by Macmillans in 1941 as a Federal Tract.

5 Hayek, Von put forward his analysis in ‘Economic Conditions of Inter‐State Federation’, New Commonwealth Quarterly, London, September 1939.Google Scholar

6 See Wootton, Barbara, Socialism and Federation, Federal Tracts No. 6, London, Macmillan, 1941.Google Scholar

7 See Wilson, J. H., ‘Economic Aspects of Federation’, First Annual Report 1939–40, London, Federal Union Research Institute, 1940.Google Scholar

8 Meade, James E., ‘Economic Problems of International Government’, First Annual Report 1939–40, London, Federal Union Research Institute, 1940.Google Scholar

9 See for example Walter Lipgens, Europa‐Föderationspläne der Widerstandsbewegungen, 1940–45, Munich, Oldenbourg Verlag, R. for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, 1968; Paolini, E. (ed.), Storia del federalismo europeo, Turin, Edizione RAI, 1973; and Rossolillo, F., ‘La Scuola Federalista Inglese’, in Pistone, S.(ed.), L’idea dell’unificazione europea dalla prima alla seconda guerra mondiale, Turin, Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 1975.Google Scholar

10 Uwe Kitzinger, Diplomacy and Persuasion, London, Thames & Hudson, 1973, p. 192.

11 Political and Economic Planning has since merged with the Centre for Studies in Social Policy to become the Policy Studies Institute.

12 Denton, G., Forsyth, M. and MacLennan, M., Economic Planning and Policies in Britain, France and Germany, London, Allen & Unwin for PEP, 1968.Google Scholar

13 London, OUP for Chatham House, 1965.