Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_910674dd-0ef6-561e-a645-a50a8a281c1d">13Ibid, p 131.
14M. Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture, and Health in Twentieth Century Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp 223ff, and passim.
15Cited in Rogan, The Moral Economists, p 44.
16N. Dennis and A.H. Halsey, English Ethical Socialism: Thomas More to R.H. Tawney, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, p 1.
17S. Collini, Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp 181, 193.
18M. Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp 180–81.
19J. Offer, An Intellectual History of British Social Policy: Idealism versus Non-Idealism, Bristol, Policy Press, 2006, p 4.
20R.H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, London, G. Bell and Sons, 1921, and subsequent reprints. For the work’s status, B. Jackson, Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900–64, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007.
21L. Goldman, The Life of R.H. Tawney, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, p 189ff.
22Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, pp 24, 27, 30, 32, 34, 241–2.
23D. Todman, Britain’s War: Into Battle, 1937–1941, London, Allen Lane, 2016, pp 224, 271.
24D. Reynolds, ‘1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century’, International Affairs, 66, 2, 1990, pp 325–50.
25R.M. Titmuss, ‘Can the Poor Save?’, The Spectator, 23 February 1940, pp 244–5.
26A.M. Jones, letter, ‘Can the Poor Save?’, The Spectator, 1t March 1940, p 289.
27R.M. Titmuss, letter, ‘Can the Poor Save?’, The Spectator, 8 March 1940, p 331.
28See the references in J. Welshman, Underclass: A History of the Excluded since 1880, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2nd edn 2013.
29TITMUSS/7/49, letter, 13 June 1941, Lloyd-George to Rathbone.
FROM PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL POLICY TO THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Problems of Social Policy: researching and firewatching
From late 1941, Titmuss was engaged in researching and writing Problems of Social Policy, published in 1950. This was part of the ‘History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Civil Series’. Intriguingly, ‘Problems of Social Policy’ was the title of a passage in a 1932 work by Tawney.1 It was originally planned that Titmuss write two volumes on the wartime social services. In January 1951, he told a government official that the second was due later that year, and he would send him a draft when revisions had been made.2 But by this point Titmuss was fully occupied at the LSE. In a letter to the School’s director in late 1951, Titmuss complained about his workload. Consequently, he had had ‘to shelve indefinitely editorial work on the second volume’.3 By the summer of 1952, Titmuss had thrown in the towel, telling another government official that Margaret Gowing was taking over. He had been ‘reluctantly forced to give it up owing to extreme pressures of work here. I am finding that there are limits to human endurance!’4 The book which ultimately appeared had an introductory chapter by Gowing, but the principal authors were Sheila Ferguson and Hilde Fitzgerald. In a generous preface, Hancock noted that it had initially been envisaged that these two would work alongside Titmuss. But ill health, and the ‘pressure of University duties’, had led the latter to resign as principal author. Nonetheless, he had ‘continued to give assistance to his two colleagues, and the book they have now completed conforms closely to his original plan’. The volume itself made frequent references to Titmuss’s earlier work.5 As his correspondence suggests, Titmuss was not averse to letting others know how much he had to do, a habit maintained for the rest of his career. While Titmuss’s volume was not published until 1950, it is appropriate to deal with it here as it dominated his life for most of the 1940s.
The Civil Histories series arose from the deliberations, in mid-1941, of the Cabinet committee responsible for the War Cabinet’s Historical Section.6 The proposal received significant backing from senior politicians, and from a committee of professional historians, including Tawney, which advised the Historical Section. Keith Hancock, Professor of History at the University of Birmingham, was given overall control, with Titmuss recommended to him by Eva Hubback. At last, in January 1942, Titmuss was able to resign from his insurance job, and join the Cabinet Office, almost doubling his income. Hancock was to play an important part in Titmuss’s life in the 1940s. Outside work, they went on walking tours of North Wales and were firewatchers at St Paul’s Cathedral. Most importantly, though, Hancock became an admirer of Titmuss’s historical skills. In 1944, for example, he suggested that Titmuss lead a small group working on the histories ‘for discussion and mutual criticism’.7 In November 1945, meanwhile, Hancock told his historians that while up until now it had been impossible to give definitive instructions as to what any published outputs might look like, he was now ‘authorised to invite you to prepare a history publication’. Fourteen pages of guidelines were provided.8 In the preface to his own volume, Hancock outlined the origins of the series, what it sought to do, and the issues which had confronted the authors. It had been ‘accepted in the first place as