Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John
of ‘subordination to the social purpose for which it is carried on’.22
It is not hard to see here what appealed to Titmuss. Tawney’s arguments were historically grounded, as were so many of Titmuss’s. The latter’s critique of individualism, at least as understood and practised under contemporary capitalism, matches that of Tawney, as does his related appeal to ‘community’ and the best it can enable in individuals given the opportunity. It was to be a constant in Titmuss’s thought that, just as for Tawney, society and its aspirations could not be satisfied simply by the claims of economics, or the market, or materialism. But perhaps most interestingly in the context of Titmuss’s early wartime writings is Tawney’s notion of ‘the whole community in a fever’. For Titmuss, too, modern society had a pathological problem, deriving from the psychological strains of modernity, and the consequent disastrous moral sickness at both social and individual levels. The idea that societies, like individuals, could be ‘sick’ was, again, a recurring theme in Titmuss’s social analysis. It also sits well with the notion, noted in Chapter 3, of an ‘organic’ society, with its emphasis on human interconnectedness. Society can damage the individual, which, in turn, does further damage to the organism as a whole.
As we have seen in his articles for Town and Country Planning and The New Statesman, Titmuss argued that the problems societies had in reproducing themselves were not distinct from but, on the contrary, were fundamentally linked to, and even among the causes of, the present war. Materialism and selfishness, and the psychological damage they inflicted, led to a declining birth rate, personal stress and unhappiness, and conflict. The message was clear, and built on and enlarged that of Tawney. A ‘morally unhealthy’ society had to be replaced by one which prioritised cooperation over competition, and enabled the release of humanity’s inherent altruism. Civilisation was at stake in the 1940s, with the possible alternative being a ‘race of sub-men’. In short, morality had to replace the constant seeking of material gain. Titmuss’s revulsion at the single-minded pursuit of material gain at the expense of all truly human sentiments was to be a further constant thread in his thought, informing his views on matters apparently diverse as how social workers went about their professional duties, the perils of an ‘Affluent Society’ in post-war Britain, and voluntary blood donation.
Saving the poor and feeding the masses
Just as ‘progressive opinion’ did not have the political field to itself, so too were Titmuss’s views not unchallenged. In early 1940, for instance, The Spectator published his article ‘Can the Poor Save?’ The timing here is important as, in autumn 1939, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, had presented his first wartime budget. Unsurprisingly, this was geared to the demands of Britain’s prosecution of the war, squeezing taxpayers and consumers of goods such as sugar and tobacco. Shortly afterwards, following some government hesitation, the rationing of foodstuffs was gradually introduced. Bacon and butter, for instance, had restricted availability from January 1940.23 Titmuss’s article, and the response to it, thus came at a time when, notwithstanding that there was only very limited military action (the ‘Phoney War’), the British people were being asked to make sacrifices for the national good. And, of course, nobody could have confidently predicted the events which were shortly to follow, including the fall of France and the Battle of Britain. With the benefit of historical hindsight, 1940 has been identified as the ‘fulcrum of the twentieth century’, when the European order suffered staggering blows from which it was to take a long time to recover.24
In his original contribution, Titmuss argued that restrictions on consumption would unnecessarily punish the poor. It was ‘perfectly clear’ that a large section of the population could not cut down on their food intake ‘without running a grave risk to their health – and to the nation’s well-being’. Those with large families, moreover, were most at risk, for it was well known that ‘the more children there are in a family the lower is the standard of nutrition’. This was ‘startlingly illustrated’ by the fact that the death rate from bronchitis and pneumonia in one year olds from the poorest classes exceeded that of infants in rich and middle class families by 572 per cent. Any reduction in food consumption would inevitably lead to a reduction in family size, just as had happened in the First World War – for Titmuss, a serious threat to Britain’s future. This was particularly ironic in the present circumstances, since if the ‘under-privileged had maintained the same birth-rate as the rich during the last thirty years we should not now have had sufficient man-power to fight this war’. There should, therefore, be true equality of sacrifice, and strict controls on prices and profits.25 Titmuss was thus questioning part of the narrative of rationing, which in fact was popularly accepted, that there should be ‘fair shares for all’, and thereby equal contributions to the war effort by all parts of society.
Titmuss’s article provoked a disgusted response from Dr Alice Mahony Jones (for British readers of a certain age she was, indeed, from Tunbridge Wells). As we shall see, his consequent reply questioned the coherence of Jones’s argument, and he had a point – hers is a difficult letter to understand, or even summarise. But, in essence, Jones challenged especially Titmuss’s claim about infant mortality and class, ‘if only to prevent its return as a boomerang via Hamburg’. This now rather obscure geographical reference alludes to the location of the broadcasting station which transmitted the English language ‘Germany Calling’ programme, often led by the Anglo-Irishman (William Joyce) nicknamed ‘Lord Haw Haw’. Jones questioned Titmuss’s suggestion of malnutrition (a word he had not in fact used) among poor children, at least in the sense of not having enough to eat (which is not what ‘malnutrition’ means). Rather, such children were being given the wrong foodstuffs (which is what ‘malnutrition’ means). And, according to her own records, over a 14-year period the average weight of babies born to the poorer classes had ‘exceeded that of richer ones; which does not suggest that the mothers suffer from malnutrition’. If Titmuss’s data were correct, then the discrepancy in mortality was primarily due to the ‘ignorance and incompetence of the mothers’, attributable to low levels of intelligence and a lack of knowledge of hygiene. These could be addressed through education. Regarding the birth rate, and in a surprisingly progressive tone given what had gone before, she suggested allowances be paid to the mother for each child under the age of five alongside a recognition, ‘in all classes’, that the ‘risk and ordeal of child-bearing’ was something ‘brave and public spirited, and not … a subject for condolence or crude humour’.26 This part of Jones’s letter could have been written by Titmuss’s friend Eleanor Rathbone, whose book The Case for Family Allowances had recently been published.
Responding, Titmuss claimed to be ‘astonished to find in a member of the medical profession such abysmal ignorance of the progress made in the science of nutrition during the past fifteen years’. Her views about maternal incompetence and ignorance were, moreover, similar to those held in the eighteenth century, ‘when it was assumed that the poor represented an inferior strain of the population and that excessive infantile mortality was Nature’s salutary way of eliminating the unfit’. Titmuss recommended that Jones read various analyses of the relationship between income and nutritional standards, including that by the British Medical Association’s Committee on Nutrition. As to ignorance and incompetence, he preferred to ‘believe that the art of motherhood is as high in this country as anywhere in the world’. Titmuss noted, too, Jones’s jibe about providing propaganda material for the Germans. In retaliation, he asserted that she ‘apparently prefers to let it be known that the mass of the British working-class are too ignorant and incompetent to bear the responsibility of children’. But he was not interested in the ‘nightly comic opera performance from Hamburg’, preferring instead to get at the truth of ‘the condition of the people of this country’.27