Abstract
The 1960s saw the British social policy debate transformed. The assumptions of the 1950s were swept aside, and poverty and inequality were reinstated as critical social issues. While the rediscovery of poverty did not come as a sudden blinding revelation, one dimension of hardship after another was thrust firmly into political consciousness, and the cumulative impact on the social policy agenda was very great. This change did not flow from any sudden shift in the structure of British life; perceptions of income trends changed dramatically while the actual distribution of income remained broadly stable. Nor was the change imposed on politicians by pressures from below; the poor remained unassertive themselves, and were undefended by well-organised allies. Rather, the rediscovery of poverty and the policy response to it were the products of the internal dynamics of the social policy process.
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Notes
See Homer Barnett, Innovation: The Basis of Cultural Change (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), p. 185.
See, for instance, the figures on the newspapers and journals read by senior civil servants in Richard Rose, Politics in England, 2nd edn. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 236.
See John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision-making (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), ch. 4.
Brian Abel-Smith, Labour’s Social Plans (London: Fabian Society, Tract 369, 1966).
Punnett argues that these problems make detailed planning an unwise strategy for opposition parties. R. M. Punnett, Front-Bench Opposition (London: Heinemann, 1973), pp. 205–15.
Quoted in L. J. Sharpe, ‘The Social Scientist and Policy-making’, Policy and Politics, 4 (1975), p. 19. Sharpe provides an interesting comparison of the role of social science in the American and British policy processes.
For a similar example in the case of racial discrimination, see Nicholas Deakin, Colour, Citizenship and British Society (London: Panther Books, 1970), p. III.
Compare this with the range of approaches considered by the non-departmental task force that drafted the American War on Poverty; see James Sundquist and C. Schelling (eds), On Fighting Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1969).
Central Policy Review Staff, A joint Framework for Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1975).
Robert Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy (London: Heinemann, 1971), p. 114.
For examples in other western societies, see Arnold Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo and Carolyn Adams, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975).
On this general question, see David Donnison, ‘Research for Policy’, Minerva, X (1972), 519–36.
For this debate, see Mark Abrams and Richard Rose, Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1960);
W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966);
John Goldthorpe, David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer and Jennifer Platt, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969);
John Westergaard, ‘The Rediscovery, of the Cash Nexus’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville (eds), Labour and Inquality (London: Merlin Press, 1970).
Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy; Margaret Wynn, Family Policy (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1972).
Peter Townsend and N. Bosanquet (eds), Labour and Inequaliy (London: Fabian Society, 1972).
J. C. Kincaid, Povery and Inequaliy in Britain (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1973).
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© 1979 Keith G. Banting
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Banting, K.G. (1979). The Social Policy Process. In: Poverty, Politics and Policy. Studies in Policy-Making. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03610-3_5
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