But the ‘welfare state’—
As a consequence, rudimentary welfare provisions of one kind or another were already widespread before 1945, although their quality and reach varied widely. Germany was typically the most advanced country, having already instituted pension, accident and medical insurance schemes under Bismarck, between 1883 and 1889. But other countries began to catch up in the years immediately before and after World War One. Embryonic national insurance and pension schemes were introduced in Britain by Asquith’s Liberal governments in the first decade of the century; and both Britain and France established ministries of health immediately following the end of the Great War, in 1919 and 1920 respectively.
Compulsory unemployment insurance, first introduced in Britain in 1911, was instituted in Italy (1919), Austria (1920), Ireland (1923), Poland (1924), Bulgaria (1925), Germany and Yugoslavia (1927) and Norway (1938). Romania and Hungary already had accident and sickness insurance schemes in place before World War One, and all the countries of eastern Europe introduced national pension systems between the wars. Family allowances were a key element in plans to increase the birth rate—a particular obsession after 1918 in countries badly hit by wartime losses—and were introduced first in Belgium (1930), next in France (1932) and in Hungary and the Netherlands just before the outbreak of war.
But none of these arrangements, not even those of the Nazis, represented comprehensive welfare systems. They were cumulative
It was the war that changed all this. Just as World War One had precipitated legislation and social provisions in its wake—if only to deal with the widows, orphans, invalids and unemployed of the immediate post- war years—so the Second World War transformed both the role of the modern state and the expectations placed upon it. The change was most marked in Britain, where Maynard Keynes correctly anticipated a post-war ‘craving for social and personal
The post-1945 European welfare states varied considerably in the resources they provided and the way they financed them. But certain general points can be made. The provision of social
The important differences lay in the schemes set in place to pay for the new public provisions. Some countries collected revenue through taxation and provided free or heavily-subsidized care and services—this was the system chosen in Britain, where it reflected the contemporary preference for state monopolies. In other countries cash benefits were paid to citizens according to socially-determined criteria of eligibility, with the beneficiaries left to purchase services of their own choice. In France and some smaller countries citizens would be expected to pay up front for certain categories of medical provision, for example, but could then claim back much of their expenses from the state.
These differences reflected varying systems of national finance and accounting, but they also signified a fundamental strategic choice. In isolation, social insurance, however generous, was not in principle politically radical—we have seen how relatively early it was introduced in even the most conservative of regimes.
In eastern Europe, for example, the Communist regimes after 1948 on the whole did
Although Sweden and Norway (but not Denmark) were in the vanguard of benefit provision across a broad range of social services, and West Germany kept in place the welfare provisions inherited from past regimes (including Nazi-era programmes aimed at encouraging a high-birth rate), it was in Britain that the most ambitious efforts were made to build, from scratch, a genuine ‘Welfare State’. In part this reflected the unique position of Britain’s Labour Party, which won an outright victory at the elections of July 1945 and—unlike the governments of most other European countries—was free to legislate its entire electoral programme unconstrained by coalition partners. But it also derived from the rather distinctive sources of British reformism.
The social legislation of post-war Britain was based on the justly famous wartime report by Sir William Beveridge, published in November 1942 and an immediate best-seller. Beveridge was born in 1879, the son of a British judge in imperial India, and his sensibilities and ambitions were those of the great reforming Liberals of Edwardian Britain. His Report was at once an indictment of the social injustices of pre-1939 British society and a policy template for root and branch reform once the war was over. Even the Conservative Party did not dare to oppose its core recommendations and it became the moral basis for the most popular and enduring elements in Labour’s post-war programme.
Beveridge made four assumptions about post-war welfare provision, all of which were to be incorporated in British policy for the next generation: that there should be a national health service, an adequate state pension, family allowances and near-full employment. The last of these was not a welfare provision in itself, but it underpinned everything else since it took for granted that the normal situation of a healthy post-war adult was to be in full-time paid work. On this assumption generous provision could be made for unemployment insurance, pensions, family allowances, medical and other services, since these would be paid for by levies on wage packets, as well as by progressive taxation of the working population at large.
The implications were significant. Non-working women with no private health insurance of their own got coverage for the first time. The humiliation and social dependency of the old Poor Law/Means Test system was done away with—on the (presumptively) rare occasion when the citizen of the Welfare State needed public