Richard Titmuss. Stewart, John
the only contributor who had ‘always done what he ought to have done at the right time and in the right way’. For ‘this reason alone – but of course there are others – I must do my utmost to win his willing consent as author of the book, if I, as editor, should be convinced that in certain parts there is still room for substantial improvement’. Both Titmuss and Hancock should look at the new evidence ‘with a completely fresh and open mind’, and achieving this would be helped by everyone ‘tackling in the same spirit the new revealed problems of handling drafts for circulation and getting the final copy through the printing stage’.27 It is clear that Titmuss was resistant to what he undoubtedly saw as unnecessary extra work. More positively, we again see Hancock’s faith in him, both as an historian and, as Harris puts it, as a ‘tough potential ally in the face of excessive official back-tracking and obstruction’.28
Another episode of this type occurred a few months later. Titmuss received a letter from Acheson on behalf of himself, Brook, and another Cabinet Office official, A. Johnston. The three had a number of criticisms of the latest version of Titmuss’s volume, by this time at galley proof stage and, in principle at least, only a few months from publication. For instance, ‘Mr Johnston still feels that it is unfortunate that so little is said about what the emergency medical service did for air raid casualties’.29 Titmuss’s immediate response was a four-page letter to Hancock, a letter which ‘I simply loathe writing to you’, because he thought that the issues raised by Acheson had been resolved at an earlier meeting in Oxford between all interested parties. But he was also anxious that Hancock not think he was suffering from ‘persecution mania’. Nonetheless, the Oxford meeting notwithstanding, there had been a stream of written and verbal comments from the Cabinet Office, so that ‘now my mood is one of rebellion’. He then took on Brook and Johnston’s criticisms. On the issue of the Emergency Medical Service and air raid casualties, to use the example raised by Johnston, this would involve new research, rewriting another chapter on the hospitals, and encroaching on another volume in the series, that on the medical services. Ominously, he expected more such Cabinet Office criticism. ‘Quite frankly’, he told Hancock, ‘I cannot stand any more of this.’ The Cabinet Office did not seem to appreciate the toll his work had taken on his health, and on his leisure time. He had had one week off in 15 months, and in this particular week had worked almost every day. There was also the possibility of a loss of income due to difficulties in his relationship with the Medical Research Council, by which he was at this point employed (see Chapter 9). After a further series of complaints, again about the Stationery Office, he concluded: ‘It would be astonishing if, by now, you were not tired and critical of this letter and of me. I am very, very sorry, Keith.’30
Not all commentators were critical, though. In December 1943, the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, F.M. Powicke, informed Hancock that he had read Titmuss’s draft on evacuation ‘with much admiration’. Titmuss had a ‘natural gift, cultivated and strengthened by his earlier experience, for the exposition of complicated fact in the manner of a historical student’. He could, moreover, on occasion ‘write with much force and clarity’. Hancock had been ‘fortunate to have found Mr Titmuss’, and Powicke hoped ‘very much that every facility, finance included, will be given him to complete the full plan of the Social Services survey’.31 In early 1946, James Alison Glover, Deputy Senior Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, told Titmuss that he had studied the material supplied ‘with attention’. It was an ‘admirable study of recent history, brilliantly expressed’. Although Glover had been involved in a number of the events described, Titmuss had thrown fresh light on some of these, while bringing others to his attention for the first time. Glover had a few minor suggestions but, overall, he ‘very warmly’ congratulated Titmuss.32 From the Department of Health for Scotland, meanwhile, A. Bruce Auckland responded to Titmuss’s drafts on evacuation. Again, only minor changes were suggested. Auckland added that he had had ‘several complimentary comments on the way the chapters have been written … One person said you were “making a grand job of it”’.33 From a Scottish civil servant, gushing praise indeed.
And in 1949, the Ministry of Education’s Permanent Secretary, Sir John Maud, told Brook that he had not had time to fully absorb the part of Titmuss’s draft dealing with the later stages of evacuation, the hospital services, and social care. But several colleagues had ‘studied it carefully’. From what they had told him, and what he had gleaned from his own preliminary reading, it was clear that ‘it is a fair, well balanced and wise appreciation of what took place’.34 This was an especially intriguing letter. Maud, like Brook, was a high-flying civil servant, and they would have known each other well. So did Brook seek Maud’s advice, or did Maud offer it unsolicited? Was Maud aware of the criticisms of Titmuss by Brook and his colleagues that was currently circulating? It would have been surprising if he was not. In any event, Titmuss had supporters in Whitehall, as well as critics. This even extended to the Treasury. In March 1950 Titmuss wrote to an official thanking him for ‘the trouble you took in writing letters about reviews of my War History. The article in the Manchester Guardian yesterday was excellent and pleased us all’.35
The tensions involved in the volume’s production notwithstanding, Titmuss’s labours undoubtedly made an impact, even before its actual publication. Shortly after the announcement that the series would go ahead, Titmuss was contacted by the Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, and editor of Economic History Review, Michael Postan. Postan had been educated at the LSE (including by Tawney), had taught there, and was central to the Civil Histories series. It was with his editorial hat on that he wrote, offering Titmuss the chance to ‘introduce yourself to economic historians’ by contributing an article to the Review ‘on public health services during the last forty years or, say, since Lloyd George’. Were he to do this for publication in the coming year, ‘it would probably also serve as a background study for your synoptic volume’. Titmuss regretfully turned this offer down, due to the demands of Problems of Social Policy. The type of study Postan had suggested, Titmuss agreed, did not presently exist, and was ‘something I have wanted to do for a while, but have never had the time’.36 It was a small enough incident in its own way, but nonetheless Postan, like Hancock and Powicke a professional historian, clearly had a positive view of Titmuss’s own historical abilities.
Titmuss’s analysis of the war’s domestic impact can be summarised as follows. First, the conflict engendered a sense of social solidarity and moral purpose – the Dunkirk or Blitz ‘spirit’ – where everyone was in it together, sharing equally in necessary sacrifice, while fundamentally questioning pre-existing ideas and practices. Second, the war revealed, notably through the process of evacuation, the poor condition of Britain’s urban working class. This awakened the nation’s conscience and had both immediate effects, for instance a more humane attitude on the part of social service providers, as well as contributing to rising demands for post-war social reconstruction. Social solidarity further enabled a consensus over such reconstruction. Third, British citizens came to see the government as the mechanism whereby social injustices could, indeed should, be remedied, and the government duly responded. This contrasted with the official inertia of the 1930s. Fourth, the war and its aftermath, with the rapidly expanding social services eventually coalescing in the ‘welfare state’, again stood in contrast to the economic depression, and poor social