William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge,
(5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British
economist who was a noted progressive and
social reformer.
He is best known for his 1942 report Social
Insurance and Allied Services (known as the
Beveridge Report) which served as the basis
for the post-World War II welfare state put
in place by the Labour government elected
in 1945. He was considered an authority on
unemployment insurance from early in his career,
served under Winston Churchill on the Board
of Trade as Director of the newly created
labour exchanges and later as Permanent Secretary
of the Ministry of Food. He was Director of
the London School of Economics and Political
Science from 1919 until 1937, when he was
elected Master of University College, Oxford.
Beveridge published widely on unemployment
and social security, his most notable works
being: Unemployment: A Problem of Industry
(1909), Planning Under Socialism (1936), Full
Employment in a Free Society (1944), Pillars
of Security (1943), Power and Influence (1953),
and A Defence of Free Learning (1959).
== Early life and education ==
Beveridge, the eldest son of Henry Beveridge,
an Indian Civil Service officer and District
Judge, and scholar Annette Ackroyd, was born
in Rangpur, British India (now Rangpur, Bangladesh),
on 5 March 1879.
Beveridge's mother had, with Elizabeth Malleson,
founded the Working Women's College in Queen
Square, London in 1864. She met and married
Henry Beveridge in Calcutta where she had
gone in 1873 to open a school for Indian girls.
William Beveridge was educated at Charterhouse,
a leading public school near the market town
of Godalming in Surrey, followed by Balliol
College at the University of Oxford, where
he studied Mathematics and Classics, obtaining
a first class degree in both. He later studied
law.While Beveridge's mother had been a member
of the Stourbridge Unitarian community, his
father was an early humanist and positivist
activist and "an ardent disciple" of the French
philosopher Auguste Comte. Comte's ideas of
a secular religion of humanity were a prominent
influence in the household and would exert
a lasting influence on Beveridge's thinking.
Beveridge himself became a "materialist agnostic",
in his words.
== Life and career ==
After leaving university, Beveridge initially
became a lawyer. He became interested in the
social services and wrote about the subject
for the Morning Post newspaper. His interest
in the causes of unemployment began in 1903
when he worked at Toynbee Hall, a settlement
house in London. There he worked closely with
Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and was influenced
by their theories of social reform, becoming
active in promoting old age pensions, free
school meals, and campaigning for a national
system of labour exchanges.In 1908, now considered
to be Britain's leading authority on unemployment
insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb
to Winston Churchill, who had recently been
promoted to the Cabinet as President of the
Board of Trade. Churchill invited Beveridge
to join the Board of Trade, and he organised
the implementation of the national system
of labour exchanges and National Insurance
to combat unemployment and poverty. During
the First World War he was involved in mobilising
and controlling manpower. After the war, he
was knighted and made permanent secretary
to the Ministry of Food.In 1919 he left the
civil service to become director of the London
School of Economics and Political Science.
Over the next few years he served on several
commissions and committees on social policy.
He was so highly influenced by the Fabian
Society socialists – in particular by Beatrice
Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909 Poor
Laws report – that he could be considered
one of their number. He published academic
economic works including his early work on
unemployment (1909). The Fabians made him
a director of the LSE in 1919, a post he retained
until 1937. During his time as Director, he
jousted with Edwin Cannan and Lionel Robbins,
who were trying to steer the LSE away from
its Fabian roots. From 1929 he led the International
scientific committee on price history, contributing
a large historical study, Prices and Wages
in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth
Century (1939).
In 1933 he helped set up the Academic Assistance
Council. This helped prominent academics who
had been dismissed from their posts on grounds
of race, religion or political position to
escape Nazi persecution. In 1937, Beveridge
was appointed Master of University College,
Oxford.
== Wartime work ==
Three years later, Ernest Bevin, Minister
of Labour in the wartime National government,
invited Beveridge to take charge of the Welfare
department of his Ministry. Beveridge refused,
but declared an interest in organising British
manpower in wartime (Beveridge had come to
favour a strong system of centralised planning).
Bevin was reluctant to let Beveridge have
his way but did commission him to work on
a relatively unimportant manpower survey from
June 1940 and so Beveridge became a temporary
civil servant. Neither Bevin nor the Permanent
Secretary of the Ministry Sir Thomas Phillips
liked working with Beveridge as both found
him conceited.His work on manpower culminated
in his chairmanship of the Committee on Skilled
Men in the Services which reported to the
War Cabinet in August and October 1941. Two
recommendations of the committee were implemented:
Army recruits were enlisted for their first
six weeks into the General Service Corps,
so that their subsequent posting could take
account of their skills and the Army's needs;
and the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical
Engineers was created.
=== Report on social insurance ===
An opportunity for Bevin to ease Beveridge
out presented itself in May 1941 when Minister
of Health Ernest Brown announced the formation
of a committee of officials to survey existing
social insurance and allied services, and
to make recommendations. Although Brown had
made the announcement, the inquiry had largely
been urged by Minister without Portfolio Arthur
Greenwood, and Bevin suggested to Greenwood
making Beveridge chairman of the committee.
Beveridge, at first uninterested and seeing
the committee as a distraction from his work
on manpower, accepted only reluctantly.The
Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance
and Allied Services was published in November
1942. It proposed that all people of working
age should pay a weekly national insurance
contribution. In return, benefits would be
paid to people who were sick, unemployed,
retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that
this system would provide a minimum standard
of living "below which no one should be allowed
to fall". It recommended that the government
should find ways of fighting the "five giants
on the road of reconstruction" of Want, Disease,
Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Beveridge
included as one of three fundamental assumptions
the fact that there would be a National Health
Service of some sort, a policy already being
worked on in the Ministry of Health.Beveridge's
arguments were widely accepted. He appealed
to conservatives and other sceptics by arguing
that welfare institutions would increase the
competitiveness of British industry in the
post-war period, not only by shifting labour
costs like healthcare and pensions out of
corporate ledgers and onto the public account
but also by producing healthier, wealthier
and thus more motivated and productive workers
who would also serve as a great source of
demand for British goods.
Beveridge saw full employment (defined as
unemployment of no more than 3%) as the pivot
of the social welfare programme he expressed
in the 1942 report. Full Employment in a Free
Society, written in 1944 expressed how this
goal might be gained. Alternative measures
for achieving it included Keynesian-style
fiscal regulation, direct control of manpower,
and state control of the means of production.
The impetus behind Beveridge's thinking was
social justice, and the creation of an ideal
new society after the war. He believed that
the discovery of objective socio-economic
laws could solve the problems of society.
== Later career ==
Later in 1944, Beveridge, who had recently
joined the Liberal Party, was elected to the
House of Commons in a by-election to succeed
George Charles Grey, who had died on the battlefield
in Normandy, France, on the first day of Operation
Bluecoat on 30 July 1944. Beveridge briefly
served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the
constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed, during
which time he was prominent in the Radical
Action group, which called for the party to
withdraw from the war-time electoral pact
and adopt more radical policies. However,
he lost his seat at the 1945 general election,
when he was defeated by the Conservative candidate,
Robert Thorp, by a majority of 1,962 votes.
The following year, the new Labour Government
began the process of implementing Beveridge's
proposals that provided the basis of the modern
Welfare State. Clement Attlee and the Labour
Party defeated Winston Churchill's Conservative
Party at the 1945 general election. Attlee
announced he would introduce the Welfare State
outlined in the 1942 Beveridge Report. This
included the establishment of a National Health
Service in 1948 with taxpayer funded medical
treatment for all. A national system of benefits
was also introduced to provide "social security"
so that the population would be protected
from the "cradle to the grave". The new system
was partly built upon the National Insurance
scheme set up by Liberal Prime Minister, David
Lloyd George in 1911.
In 1946, Beveridge was elevated to the House
of Lords as Baron Beveridge, of Tuggal in
the County of Northumberland, and eventually
became leader of the Liberal Party in the
House of Lords. He was the author of Power
and Influence (1953).
He was the President of the charity Attend
(then the National Association of Leagues
of Hospital Friends) from 1952–1962.
== Eugenics ==
Beveridge was a member of the Eugenics Society,
which promoted the study of methods to 'improve'
the human race by controlling reproduction.
In 1909, he proposed that men who could not
work should be supported by the state "but
with complete and permanent loss of all citizen
rights – including not only the franchise
but civil freedom and fatherhood." Whilst
director of the London School of Economics,
Beveridge attempted to create a Department
of Social Biology. Though never fully established,
Lancelot Hogben, a fierce anti-eugenicist,
was named its chair. Former LSE director John
Ashworth speculated that discord between those
in favour and those against the serious study
of eugenics led to Beveridge's departure from
the school in 1937.In the 1940s, Beveridge
credited the Eugenics Society with promoting
the children's allowance, which was incorporated
into his 1942 report. However, whilst he held
views in support of eugenics, he did not believe
the report had any overall "eugenic value".
Professor Danny Dorling of the University
of Sheffield says "there is not even the faintest
hint" of eugenic thought in the report.Dennis
Sewell states that "On the day the House of
Commons met to debate the Beveridge Report
in 1943, its author slipped out of the gallery
early in the evening to address a meeting
of the Eugenics Society at the Mansion House.
... His report he was keen to reassure them,
was eugenic in intent and would prove so in
effect. ... The idea of child allowances had
been developed within the society with the
twin aims of encouraging the educated professional
classes to have more children than they currently
did and, at the same time, to limit the number
of children born to poor households. For both
effects to be properly stimulated, the allowance
needed to be graded: middle-class parents
receiving more generous payments than working-class
parents. ... The Home Secretary had that very
day signalled that the government planned
a flat rate of child allowance. But Beveridge,
alluding to the problem of an overall declining
birth rate, argued that even the flat rate
would be eugenic. Nevertheless, he held out
hope for the purists." 'Sir William made it
clear that it was in his view not only possible
but desirable that graded family allowance
schemes, applicable to families in the higher
income brackets, be administered concurrently
with his flat rate scheme,' reported the Eugenics
Review.
== Personal life ==
Lord Beveridge married Jessy Janet, daughter
of William Philip and widow of David Mair,
in 1942. He died at his home on 16 March 1963,
aged 84, and was buried in Thockrington churchyard,
on the Northumbrian moors. His barony became
extinct upon his death. His last words, as
he sat up in bed whilst still working on his
'History of Prices', were "I have a thousand
things to do".
== Commemoration ==
Beveridge Street in the Christchurch Central
City was named for William Beveridge. It was
one of 120 streets that were renamed in 1948
by Peter Fraser's Labour Government of New
Zealand.In November 2018, English Heritage
unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Beveridge
at 27 Bedford Gardens in Campden Hill, London
W8 7EF where he lived from 1914 until 1921.
== Works ==
Unemployment: A problem of industry, 1909.
online (Archive.org)
Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth
to the Nineteenth Century, 1939.
Social Insurance and Allied Services, 1942.
(The Beveridge Report)
The Pillars of Security and Other War-Time
Essays and Addresses, 1943, republished 2014.
Full Employment in a Free Society, 1944.
The Economics of Full Employment, 1944.
Why I am a Liberal, 1945.
Power and Influence, 1953.
"India Called Them," George Allen & Unwin,
1947
Plan for Britain: A Collection of Essays prepared
for the Fabian Society by G. D. H. Cole, Aneurin
Bevan, Jim Griffiths, L. F. Easterbrook, Sir
William Beveridge, and Harold J. Laski (Not
illustrated with 127 text pages).
== See also ==
Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee's Health Minister
Beveridge curve – the relationship between
unemployment and the job vacancy rate
List of liberal theorists
List of British university chancellors and
vice-chancellors
List of United Kingdom MPs with the shortest
service
List of Vice-Chancellors of the University
of London
== Resources ==
Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography,
Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-820685-2.
Julien Demade, Produire un fait scientifique.
Beveridge et le Comité international d'histoire
des prix, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne,
2018. ISBN 979-10-351-0058-2.
William Beveridge's archives are held at the
London School of Economics.
Photographs of William Beveridge held by LSE
Archives
Donald Markwell, John Maynard Keynes and International
Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace,
Oxford University Press, 2006.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Addison, Paul. The Road To 1945: British Politics
and the Second World War (1977) pp 211-28.
Harris, Jose. William Beveridge: a biography
(1997) online.
Hills, John et al. eds. Beveridge and Social
Security: an International Retrospective (1994)
Robertson, David Brian. "Policy entrepreneurs
and policy divergence: John R. Commons and
William Beveridge." Social Service Review
62.3 (1988): 504-531.
Sugita, Yoneyuki. "The Beveridge Report and
Japan." Social work in public health 29.2
(2014): 148-161.
Whiteside, Noel. "The Beveridge Report and
its implementation: A revolutionary project?."
Histoire@ Politique 3 (2014): 24-37. online
=== Primary sources ===
Williams, Ioan, and Karel Williams, eds. A
Beveridge Reader (2014); Works of William
H. Beveridge).
== External links ==
Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament
by William Beveridge
Sir William Beveridge Foundation
burkespeerage.com
Spartacus Educational on William Beveridge
and The Beveridge Report
Full text of the Beveridge Report
BBC information
BBC Radio 4, Great Lives – Downloadable
30 minute discussion of William Beveridge
Catalogue of William Beveridge's papers at
the London School of Economics (LSE Archives)
Cataloguing the Beveridge papers at LSE Archives
Newspaper clippings about William Beveridge
in the 20th Century Press Archives of the
German National Library of Economics (ZBW)
