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

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

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