The Five Giants [New Edition]: A Biography of the Welfare State

The Five Giants

NICHOLAS TIMMINS is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and at the King’s Fund, and a visiting professor in social policy at the London School of Economics and in public management at King’s College, London. He was public policy editor and commentator at the Financial Times from 1996 to 2012. He worked previously for Nature, the Press Association and The Times, and was a founder member of the Independent.

from the reviews:

‘A splendid book – knowledgeable, readable and fair’

ROBERT SKIDELSKY

‘Nicholas Timmins has done something extraordinary: he has made a masterpiece of contemporary history even better. Updated, extended and more relevant than ever, this book is quite simply indispensable’

MATTHEW D’ANCONA

‘The first thing I did when appointed as Secretary of State at Work and Pensions, Education and Health was borrow The Five Giants from the House of Commons Library in order to understand how the issues I was to deal with had developed since Beveridge’

ALAN JOHNSON

‘For years now, old copies of The Five Giants have been changing hands in Westminster for dizzying sums – and for a simple reason. Other books just offer fragments of the story of British government, only this gives you the full picture. I lend my copy to new recruits at the Spectator not as history but as a guide to what they will encounter – and how the same problems keep surfacing again and again. The facts and the figures, the jokes and one-liners, the power and the personality – The Five Giants has it all. It’s possible to understand modern Britain without reading this book, but it’s just a lot harder (and a lot less fun)’

FRASER NELSON, Spectator

‘Timmins’s book is remarkably fair … the first comprehensive biography of the welfare state from 1945 to the present day [and] a pleasure to read’

MALCOLM RUTHERFORD, Financial Times

‘Nicholas Timmins worked on this detailed and readable book for six years – and it shows. Few books deserve being described as “definitive” or “magisterial” as richly as this one does. Its scope is enormous, dealing with the welfare state from its early inspirations to the present day. It would hardly be possible to read this book – whatever one’s political convictions – and not find much food for thought. It ranks as an extremely stimulating book which will be read for years to come’

CONOR MCGRATH, Parliamentary Monitor

‘A remarkable tale, remarkably told … The story speeds along, and there are some wonderfully funny jokes’

FRANK FIELD, Literary Review

‘Extraordinarily comprehensive without ever being incomprehensible’

ROY HATTERSLEY, Independent

‘Timmins performs wonders of narrative clarity, anecdote and human detail in a book that finds its chosen level somewhere between Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and 1066 and All That … There is something very moving about his rhetoric of transformation and The Five Giants will stir up strong emotions. It is impossible not to respond in personal terms to a book that is part of so many of our histories, woven into the day-to-day texture of our lives’

FIONA MACCARTHY, Observer

‘Readable studies of the welfare state have been few. Timmins’ blockbuster, though, is amazingly readable, brilliantly researched, and in no way flashy or superficial’

ANGUS CALDER, Scotland on Sunday

‘The Five Giants is a book which no one who speaks, writes or thinks about social policy will want to miss, still less to admit to having not read’

TESSA JOWELL, Health Service Journal

‘Ambitious – and successful … In these 600 pages Timmins dissects and organizes the 50-year period with skill and clarity. His book inhabits that territory between good journalism and academic research, which has so often produced the best contemporary history in Britain’

MALCOLM WICKS, New Statesman

‘Eminently readable … for those who have a neat interpretation of history devoid of people and accidents, Timmins’ book is a healthy but enjoyable antidote’

HOWARD GLENNESTER, Guardian

‘Timmins writes with authority, and much inside information, on recent history. He has written the best account so far of Tory social policy since 1979. But the larger achievement of the book is to place the era of Thatcher and Major in the longer term perspective of World War Two. Timmins is no academic historian, but he has made good use of the work of academics, blending their findings with flair and enthusiasm. The result is a first-class history in which a detailed exposition of social policy is combined with narrative pace and lively portraits of the people involved’

PAUL ADDISON, Independent on Sunday

‘Positively moving … Timmins takes trouble to chart the improvements in education, health and housing which the majority of people in Britain have enjoyed in the time covered by his book’

ROBERT WRIGHT, Scotsman

‘Exceptional … a work of prodigious scope and illuminating analysis, a text of true scholarship’

IAN MUNRO, Lancet

‘Outstandingly acute … a highly readable book that adds to our knowledge of the evolving history of the welfare state and provides an indispensable source for coming to a sensible view about its successes and failures. Timmins brings alive both the process of making policy and its impact’

RUDOLF KLEIN, British Medical Journal

‘The welfare state deserves a biography on a grand scale. Nicholas Timmins provides just that’

JOHN REDWOOD, The Times

‘A tour de force … thoroughly researched, vividly written and bulging with out-of-the-way information. The Five Giants is the ideal companion to the more discursive works on the post-1945 period such as Peter Hennessy’s Never Again. Not that Timmins stops at the end of the post-war world …’

ANTHONY HOWARD, Sunday Times

‘The best account of British social policy since the war’

DAVID WILLETTS, Times Literary Supplement

Copyright

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © Nicholas Timmins 2017

Cover photograph © Getty Images General Photographic Agency / Stringer

Nicholas Timmins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 978-0-00-733513-8

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008236168

Version: 2018-06-27

For Arthur, Violet and Effra

Plus any future siblings or cousins, in the hope

that as and when they need it, it will still be there.

And to all those people, users and providers,

politicians, civil servants, academics, clinicians,

managers, teachers and others who attempt to explain

the workings of the welfare state to ignorant hacks.

Without them the reporting of the subject would be

even worse than it is.

Social reform is a process, not an event: a kind of drama.

David Donnison, The Politics of Poverty (1981), p.viii

I do not agree with those who say that every man must look after himself, and that intervention by the state … will be fatal to his self-reliance, his foresight and his thrift … It is a mistake to suppose that thrift is caused only by fear; it springs from hope as well as fear. Where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.

Winston Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problems (1909), p. 209

‘Two nations: between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.’

‘You speak of –’ said Egremont hesitatingly, ‘the rich and the poor?’

Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (1845), Book II, chapter 5.

When the evidence changes, I change my mind. What do you do?

Cod quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Illustrations

Preface

Preface to the Third Edition

Introduction

PART I THE PIPERS AT THE GATE OF DAWN

1‘Thank you, Sir William’

2‘From cradle to grave’

3A very British revolution

PART II THE AGE Of OPTIMISM: 1942–51

4Butler – Education

5Butler’s legacy

6Bevan – Health

7‘With a song in my heart’ – Health and Social Security

8‘The Tremendous Tory’ – Housing

9The Final Foundations

10Conservatives, Consensus and the New Jerusalem

PART III CONSOLIDATION: 1951–74

11‘You’ve never had it so good’: Conservatives 1951–64

12Hope springs eternal: Labour 1964–70

13The Dawn of Doubt: Labour and Conservatives 1949–70

14The Tories’ last hurrah: Conservatives 1970–74

PART IV THE TIME OF DISILLUSION: 1974–79

15It was getting colder by the hour: Labour 1974–79

16‘We were wrong all along’: Conservatives 1974–79

PART V THE WELFARE STATE UNDER FIRE: 1979–92

17Cuts and catastrophes: Conservatives 1979–83

18Fighting Leviathans: Conservatives 1983–87

19Forming the future: Conservatives 1987–92

PART VI RETREAT OR RENEWAL? 1992–2010

20Thinking the unthinkable: Conservatives and Labour 1992–97

21Social security and social exclusion: Labour 1997–2007

22Public services – health, education and housing: Labour 1997–2007

23The Brown caesura: Labour 2007–10

PART VII THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN

24Austerity bites: The coalition and Conservatives 2010–16

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

Photos Section

About the Publisher

Illustrations

Plates

‘From cradle to grave …’ The Daily Mirror’s front page, December 2, 1942 (reproduced by permission of Mirror Syndication International)

Sir William Beveridge (Hulton Deutsch)

Health made Bevan’s name, but he was proud of his housing (Hulton Deutsch)

Rab Butler as President of the Board of Education (Hulton Deutsch)

Tony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education and Science (Hulton Deutsch)

Dr Guy Dain and Dr Charles Hill (Hulton Deutsch)

Jim Griffiths talks in 1955 to Richard Crossman (Hulton Deutsch)

The young Barbara Castle at the 1944 Labour party conference

Dr Derek Stevenson (© The Telegraph plc, London 1975)

David Ennals in hospital on the 30th anniversary of the NHS in 1978 (Press Association)

Sir Keith Joseph at the Conservative Party Conference in 1985 (Richard Open/Camera Press)

Norman Fowler in 1986 (The Independent/Brian Harris)

Roy Griffiths (Universal Pictorial Press & Agency Ltd)

Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo (The Independent/Edward Sykes)

Bevan’s council housing in Hainault and newly modernised bathroom and unmodernised washing facilities in flats on the LCC’s Millbank Estate (Greater London Record Office Photograph Library)

Ronan Point in 1968 (ANL/REX/Shutterstock)

Houses in St Paul’s Cray (Peter Van Arden)

Child in hospital in 1930s (Hulton Deutsch)

‘Babies under glass’ in 1944 (Hulton Deutsch)

Modern intensive care (By Ian Miles-Flashpoint Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo)

First family allowance day in Stratford, East London, 1946 (Hulton Deutsch)

Social Security Offices of the 1980s and 2000s (Benefits Agency/Photo by Jeff overs/BBC News & Current Affairs via Getty Images)

Classes at snowsfield Primary school in 1944 and 1954 (Greater London Record office Photograph Library)

Class at snowsfield Primary school in 1994 (snowsfield Primary School)

Integrated Illustrations

Beveridge Fighting the Five Giants by George Whitelaw published by the Daily Herald (© Mirror syndication International) page 12

‘Labour Isn’t Working’ (Conservative Party/Maiden outdoor) page 354

‘Come Out the Boy — Whose Throwing Things’ by Gerald scarfe published by the Sunday Times, 22 November, 1987 (Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent, Canterbury) Page 439

‘Mrs Thatcher’s Plans for the NHS’ (BMA/Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO Ltd) page 470

‘This is the road’ by David Low published by the Evening Standard, 27 January 1950 (© Solo syndication/Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent, Canterbury) page 499

Preface

There are undeniable structural difficulties in writing a narrative account of five or six not always closely related subjects across seventy years. The approach here has broadly been to break the story up by government and divide it again by subject – education, health, social security, for example. But a word of warning is necessary. Narrative thrust has been given precedence over organisational tidiness. Bits of subjects therefore crop up in places other than under their specific headings, particularly in the later chapters, where themes as well as the story are pulled together. They also appear out of their strict chronology. So to take just one example, the development of second pensions is dealt with in the late 1950s but not mentioned again in detail until the mid-1970s when what happened to failed schemes from the sixties and early seventies is discussed. Anyone, therefore, attempting to follow a particular subject rather than read the whole book would need to combine section headings with both a reading of the top and tail of each chapter, and judicious use of the index.

A note about titles is needed. I have used what felt right, which means inconsistency. Later knighthoods and peerages are therefore frequently ignored (I know who Ted Short is, but struggle to place Lord Glenamara). Conversely, where someone has long been ‘Sir’ or ‘Lady’ somebody I have tended to use the title even ahead of their elevation to it. I hope no individual feels insulted. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will, alas, because like so many British histories this is effectively England’s story with both the wrinkles and the larger differences elsewhere largely avoided. I offer as a poor excuse lack of space and the way the British government assembles its statistics.

Any book like this is the work of many hands and even more brains. Aside from the primary debts listed in the introduction I have incurred many more. Well over fifty people, from current and former politicians and civil servants to ministerial advisers and actors in the welfare state’s drama, have given me time for interviews. Most are acknowledged in the end notes. Some, because they are serving civil servants, cannot be named. A few provided help knowing they might not emerge too happily from the process. To all of them I am grateful. There were others to whom I should have talked, but I simply ran out of time. To these I apologise.

Then there are debts to journalistic colleagues, particularly a string of past education editors of the Independent, Peter Wilby, Ngaio Crequer and Colin Hughes. Along with David Walker of the BBC, Malcolm Dean of the Guardian, and Tony Bevins of the Observer, they lent me their brains, their time and their books, while many others have lent me their copy, conversation and company over the years. Sue Johnson at the Policy Studies Institute library rapidly met requests for the oddest books and articles without raising an eyebrow.

At crucial moments three professorial Peters, Peter Scott of Leeds University, Peter Kemp of York University, and Peter Hennessy of Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University, rescued me by providing references, as did Tony Lynes, Ronnie Bedford and Charles Webster, the official historian of the National Health Service.

As a journalist rather than a historian, I have chiefly relied on others’ gutting of the Public Record Office for the period for which such records are available. Alistair Cooke at Conservative Central Office was, however, generous enough to let me loose in the party’s records in the Bodleian Library up to and including the crucial period of policy formation ahead of the 1979 general election. I am grateful to him for both the access and the permission to refer to documents, and to Dr Sarah Street and Dr Martin Moore for helping me find my way around them.

A dozen or so authors deserve special mention as well as being listed in the bibliography. Nobody can write about Beveridge without owing a huge debt to José Harris’s wonderful, multi-faceted biography of him. David Donnison’s works, but particularly his Politics of Poverty, are inspirational: object lessons in how to write about social policy. I doubt I could have managed to cover education without Brian Simon’s mighty and passionate Education and the Social Order, or Harry Judge’s illuminating A Generation of Schooling, or the sharp analysis and easy writing of Stuart Maclure and Maurice Kogan. Brian Ellis’s official history of pensions from 1955 to 1975 is a starred first example of how to make a horrendously complex subject seem simple and interesting. Nobody should write about the NHS without reading Enoch Powell, Rudolf Klein, and Charles Webster. And anything written by Nicholas Deakin is always stimulating, particularly his 1987 version of The Politics of Welfare. On a broader front, the 1940s are brilliantly served by Peter Hennessy’s Never Again, Paul Addison’s The Road to 1945 and Now the War is Over, and Angus Calder’s The People’s War, while Kenneth O. Morgan’s works, and particularly The People’s Peace, his history of Britain 1945–90, are indispensable – as is Hugo Young’s study of Margaret Thatcher, One of Us.

When I started work on this book in 1993, there was really no substantial modern post-war history available to match Derek Fraser’s fine work The Evolution of the British Welfare State, which takes the story up to Beveridge. Shortly after I started, Rodney Lowe’s The Welfare State in Britain since 1945 appeared. It is completely different in character from this work, much more academic and analytical, concentrating on what he dubs the ‘classic’ welfare state up to 1976 and then moving on to 1990 in less depth. It is an excellent book. But it is not this one. I hope in some small way this will complement that.

Finally there are more personal cheques to sign. Three people – Tony Bevins, David Walker and Julian Le Grand, the Richard Titmuss Professor of Health Policy at the London School of Economics – suffered the whole book in draft. David Willetts read chapters sixteen to nineteen. David Donnison read the housing sections, Dr Gordon Macpherson those on health, Sir George Godber the NHS material up to 1974, and Stuart Maclure the education sections. Frank Field, Sir Patrick Nairne, Sir Geoffrey Otton, Norman Warner, Robin Wendt and (as a prelude to an interview) Shirley Williams all read chapters, or parts of chapters, within their competence, as did two, by convention anonymous, civil servants. All saved me from errors of both fact and judgement, large, small and downright embarrassing. All made it a better book. Some provided criticisms I have not been able to answer. If there is credit, they deserve much of it. The undoubted remaining errors of fact, judgement and tone remain all mine.

Much is due also to John Pawsey, my agent, to Betty Palmer, my copy editor, and to Philip Gwyn Jones, Caroline Hotblack and Kate Harris at HarperCollins for various forms of faith and aid, some beyond the call of duty.

The most personal cheques of all go to Tony for his energising encouragement and superbly pedantic reading of texts and to Jerry, both of whom at times had more faith in this project than I did; to Audrey Maxwell for organisation and memories; to Zoe, Jonathan and Robert for their wonderful forbearance; but most of all and for all of those to Elaine, sans qui…

Preface to the Third Edition

This fills in the missing sixteen years since the second edition of The Five Giants ended. It is probably the last edition. If not, it probably should be.

Not because, however battered parts of it feel at the time of writing, and now at age seventy, the welfare state is at death’s door. That seems less than likely any time soon, given that it is still consuming £500bn of government expenditure, or very roughly a quarter of the country’s income.

Rather, it will probably be the last edition because if this book has any value, some of it lies in the fact that for a fraction over half of its life since 1948 I was lucky enough to report not on all of it, but on key parts of it, as they happened, while working for the Press Association, The Times, the Independent and finally for the Financial Times.

I was never in the room, but I was often outside, eavesdropping, or pressing my nose up against the window. I had a ringside seat. And when I did not, I was working with journalist colleagues who did, including a whole string of excellent political, economic, education, employment, and even housing correspondents, when they existed, over the years.

So not only did I – and I hope the readers – gain hugely from the unending education provided by practitioners, recipients, civil servants, politicians, lobbyists, academics, think-tankers, special advisers and journalistic colleagues, but those relationships allowed me to go back later to query, improve, reshape and, sometimes by anecdote, illuminate parts of the account.