The Five Giants [New Edition]: A Biography of the Welfare State. Nicholas Timmins
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pointing out that the famous words of Petronius on p. 290 are in fact a cod quote. He had, he said, traced it to occupied Berlin after the war, where a presumably classically trained and deeply frustrated British officer had pinned it to a bulletin board from whence, in the days before the internet, it had, so to speak, gone viral.
The second edition – and indeed the third – owe a great deal to the members of the public policy team at the Financial Times who taught me much over the years, particularly Jim Kelly, Miranda Green and Chris Cook, successive education correspondents. My debts at the FT go much wider, not least to Richard Lambert, Lionel Barber and Robert Shrimsley, who gave me wings to fly, but also to Robert Chote, Chris Giles and Martin Wolf, each of whom sought to beat some economics into me, and also to Patti Waldmeir, who shouted at me that I did not understand US welfare reform to the point where I finally did; or at least understood it better. Again at the FT, Peter Cheek in the library dug cuttings out of basements and conjured documents out of nowhere. Outside the FT, Andy Cowper of Health Policy Insight has been, variously over the years, both a great editor and an endless source of inspiration and humour. At HarperCollins I also had the immense privilege of being edited again by Philip Gwyn Jones and Georgina Laycock, who have gone on to better things than seeking to sort me out. The second edition, like the first, was also read by Tony Bevins, and was, as is this in part, in his memory. He liked it, and one could not ask for more. He would doubtless have improved this edition. Howard Glennerster’s and Rudolf Klein’s repeatedly updated editions of their British Social Policy since 1945, and The New Politics of the NHS, plus their other writings, were critical guides to both that edition and this.
For the third edition – which fills in sixteen missing years, rather than the six between editions one and two – most of those cheques are there to sign again, and many more. Aside from the interviews, I owe huge amounts to the many present and former staff at the institute for Fiscal Studies, but most particularly to Carl Emmerson, Mike Brewer and Paul Johnson, and over the years to many at the London School of Economics, particularly but not only to Nick Barr, Gwyn Bevan and Tony Travers, and most especially to John Hills and his team at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE). Not just for all their many publications – and an analysis of CASE’s output from The State of Welfare in 1989 to Social Policy in a Cold Climate in 2016 would probably make a PhD thesis in its own right – but for many conversations. At King’s College, London, I am in debt to Alison Wolf.
Countless other academics, think-tank practitioners and special advisers have sought to keep me on the straight and narrow over the years, often from sharply differing viewpoints. Any list is invidious, but those who must be mentioned include in random order Alan Maynard, Paul Gregg, Peter Taylor-Gooby, Alan Smithers, Nick Bosanquet, Tony Culyer, Mike Rawlins, Nick Black, Jane Millar, Nick Mays, Colin Talbot, Simon Burgess, Carol Propper, Bill Morgan, Nick Seddon, Ruth Lister, Fran Bennett, Andrew Haldenby, Olly Grender, Anita Charlesworth, and in earlier days, when they were doing different things, Rick Nye, Danny Finkelstein and Geoff Mulgan.
The third edition was made easier by work already done for the Institute for Government, the King’s Fund and the Health Foundation which helped tell the update to this story. These include Never Again?, Universal Credit and Glaziers and Window Breakers, which are referenced and are now in the bibliography, not as an act of self-aggrandisement, but because they tell parts of this story in more detail and contain the source for many of the quotes.
Those publications would not have been possible without the support of Chris Ham, Andrew Adonis, Peter Riddell, Jennifer Dixon, Jill Rutter, Julian McCrae, John Appleby and Nigel Edwards, and the immense help of, among others, Philippa Stroud, Iain Duncan Smith, David Freud, David Nicholson, Stephen Brien, and a whole clutch of civil servants who, by convention, have to remain anonymous.
Even since the second edition, there has been an explosion in political ‘instant history’, not least Anthony Seldon’s multiple accounts as either author or editor of the Blair, Brown and Cameron years. These helped no end, and in places go into much more of the gory political row around some of the issues than has been possible here. But if I had to recommend just two political histories that cover the third edition, it would be Andrew Rawnsley’s magisterial accounts of the Labour years, Servants of the People and The End of the Party, and Matthew d’Ancona’s excellent In It Together for the coalition period.
For getting this edition to publication my biggest single piece of thanks goes once again to Peter Hennessy, who inspired this in the first place, and who found me a way back into HarperCollins that was defeating me. The next two go to Julian Le Grand of the LSE and Matthew Taylor at the Royal Society of Arts. Julian, as with the earlier editions, suffered all of this in draft, making many helpful suggestions and corrections while also, crucially, solving a major structural problem. Matthew, in conversation, not only donated the core of the final conceit but also, critically, delivered the very last line. Debts don’t get much bigger than that, and to both I am immensely grateful.
But there are many more. Once again I owe thanks over and above the call of duty to Kate Harris, who got me to the incredibly helpful wizards of the Oxford English Dictionary, allowing me to illustrate rather than assert how the language around ‘the welfare state’ has changed. In no particular order, Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute was immensely helpful, both in conversation and with sources, and then in reading the drafts on higher education, while Roderick Floud expounded on his Gresham College lecture for me. Ken Jones gave me an early sight of his latest edition of Education in Britain, and Richard Garner, the Independent’s long-standing education editor, did the same with The Thirty Years War, his account of thirty years of education reporting. Richard, along with Conor Ryan, now at the Sutton Trust, found time to read the schools sections. Chris Ham and Richard Humphries at the King’s Fund read health and social care. Adair Turner, Joanne Segars and Steve Webb read the pensions material. John Hills checked references to his and his colleagues’ work. Matthew Whittaker at the Resolution Foundation read and corrected key passages. Gus O’Donnell pointed out a key omission. Chris Giles at the Financial Times put right my account of the financial crash. Gavin Kelly and Dan Corry were extremely helpful. Alistair Darling and John McTernan read the Labour years and David Willetts the account of the succeeding ones. Parts were also read by civil servants, or retired civil servants who either have to, or chose to, remain anonymous. All of these helped immensely. They corrected errors of fact, tone and judgement. And where, despite their best endeavours, undoubted errors remain in all three categories, the responsibility is mine.
For the third edition and at HarperCollins my thanks are due to Arabella Pike, now William Collins publishing director, who happily, from my point of view, remembered the first edition from her most junior days at HarperCollins; to Joe Zigmond and Tom Killingbeck, my editors; to Steve Cox who produced a fine copy edit; and to Iain Hunt, senior project editor, who with good grace and no little wit undertook the heavy lifting.
Immense thanks are once again due to Elaine, Zoe, Jonathan and Robert, and to Arthur, Violet and Effra, along with Audrey, Rick, Frann and Jerry and his family, all of whom made me laugh, and who put up for endless months with a deeply distracted man.
Finally there are remarkably few new ideas in here. Rather, as with the first edition, I have largely been a weaver of other people’s ideas, analysis, dreams and actions into a tapestry: the welfare state’s story.
NICHOLAS TIMMINS
May 2017
Theory is so much clearer than history.
E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory (1978), p. 237
Freedom from Want cannot be forced on a democracy or given to a democracy. It must be won by them.
Sir William Beveridge, 20 November 1942
This book started life one September Sunday in 1989 when Peter Hennessy, in one of his more Tigger-ish moods, bounced into the Independent to deliver his ‘Whitehall Watch’ column.