War and the Benign State: The Second World War and the Growth of the British Welfare State

Oral Presentation

Historians and social scientists of Britain have noted its rapid transition from the Second World War to its modern welfare state. The causal relation between World War II and the British welfare state had been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1950s. After tracing this scholarly discourse, this article shows how the “warfare state” acted as a catalyst in the formation of the postwar “welfare state.” It does this by examining several wartime factors. What were the effects of air raid evacuations and the military episodes in 1939 and 1940 on wartime social policy? How conducive was the war economy to the transition to peacetime welfare state? How did academic and public opinion develop before and during war, and what was the popular and political significance of the Beveridge Report? Answering these questions shows the war and the need to sustain public morale compelled the government to implement several social policies and to make promises of a postwar welfare reform, which in turn helped create a wide agreement among the public and academic circles on the need of a fundamental social reform after the war. The Second World War, in short, played a significant role in enabling the postwar Labour government to establish the British welfare state. The implication of this conclusion is that the first modern welfare state owes its birth in large part to the most destructive war in history.