Disability and the Welfare State in Britain

Changes in Perception and Policy 1948–79

Hampton, Jameel, Jameel Hampton

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781447316428
  9781447316428
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781447335115
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Social Sciences

Created during and after the Second World War, the British Welfare State seemed to promise welfare for all, but, in its original form, excluded millions of disabled people. This book examines attempts in the subsequent three decades to reverse this exclusion. It is the first to contextualise disability historically in the welfare state and under each government of the period. It looks at how disability policy and perceptions were slow to change as a welfare issue, which is very timely in today's climate of austerity. It also provides the first major analysis of the Disablement Income Group, one of the most powerful pressure groups in the period and the 1972 Thalidomide campaign and its effect on the Heath government. Given the recent emergence of the history of disability in Britain as a major area of research, the book will be ideal for academics, students and activists seeking a better understanding of the topic.

SIX

The final days: disability at the end of the welfare state, 1973–79

Timeline, 1973–79
1973
October	OPEC crisis. Coal and fuel prices rise.
December	Jimmy Martin scandal.
1974
January	Three-day week begins, to conserve electricity and coal.
February	Election: Labour (301), Conservatives (297), Liberals (14), Others (21).
March	Barbara Castle becomes Secretary of State for Social Services. Alf Morris becomes Minister for the Disabled.
September	Castle announces plans for Mobility Allowance, Invalid Care Allowance and NCIP.
October	Election: Labour (319), Conservatives (277), Liberals (13), Others (24).
1975
November	Cash limits introduced on spending for the first time.
1976	Unemployment reaches 1.5 million; Callaghan speeches confirm end of full employment.
January	NCIP and Mobility Allowance become available.
April	Callaghan becomes Prime Minister; Castle is dismissed as Secretary of State for Social Services.
July	Invalid Care Allowance becomes available.
September	Callaghan government approaches IMF for loan.

Introduction

This chapter concentrates largely on 30 consummate months, January 1973 to the settlement of cash benefits in July 1975. Disabled people seemed to have made great gains, and their exclusion from the welfare state appeared to have ended.

The political situation in 1974 was favourable to increased social expenditure, and disabled people now had sufficient political and public profile to take advantage. Four new cash benefits were created: the Invalid Care Allowance, the Mobility Allowance, the Non-contributory Invalidity Pension and the Housewives Non-contributory Invalidity Pension. For services, progress in fulfilling the terms of the CSDP was now expected, and the state of play on the ground began to be scrutinised in academic studies. The cash benefits violated the contributory principle, and seemed to add up to a national disability income when the HNCIP was made law in July 1975. DIG largely began to disband, having seemingly achieved its objective. Then came the imposition of cash limits on spending and the end of the welfare state in 1976.

Why did the postwar settlement implode just at the time disabled people were finally gaining recognition? Britain was in recession in 1973 and 1974 with the crashes of the New York and London stock exchanges. The OPEC crisis had a great adverse effect on the National Balance of Payments – GDP shrank by 0.8 per cent in the second half of 1973, and 4.3 per cent in 1974.¹ The three-day week in January and February 1974 was a psychological blow, and many started to question the validity of the Keynesian system that had prevailed since the Second World War.² The recession ended in December 1974 with the end of rent freezes, and the economy expanded again in 1975. By the spring of 1975, the Wilson government had abandoned the idea of full employment. Inflation rose to 27 per cent and unemployment reached 1.5 million in 1976.³ It was in such a troubled economic period that new spending on social welfare was introduced for children, women, pensioners and disabled people.

Disabled people benefited from the turbulent politics of 1974. Both major political parties were less popular than they had been since the Second World War, with a combined 75 per cent of the vote in the February election.⁴ Both parties had influential figures, Keith Joseph and Barbara Castle (Secretary of State for Social Services), committed to the cause of disabled people. Disability was explicitly mentioned in the manifestos of both parties before the February election, and the Conservative manifesto included the possibility of a disability income. The Prime Minister appointed Morris as Minister for Disabled People (without portfolio) on his return to power in 1974.

Millward has noted correctly that the significance of placing a prominent disability activist in a notable position was part of the government’s attempts to cater for specific groups, and how his placing within the social security side instead of the health side of the DHSS confirmed the greater shift in perception from the 1940s to the 1970s: from employment, hospitalisation and local-based promotional welfare to greater provision in cash and services.⁵ Castle’s team also included Ashley as Principal Private Secretary, a young and left-leaning Jack Straw as political adviser, the ‘preening, hair tossing’ David Owen as Parliamentary Secretary for Health (later Minister of State for Health), and Brian O’Malley, who helped create the Party’s plans for disability provision in opposition, as Parliamentary Secretary for Social Security.⁶ In advance of the October election, both parties specifically courted disabled people, with Labour promising the Invalid Care Allowance, the Mobility Allowance and the NCIP.⁷ The Conservatives concurrently announced similar non-contributory benefits, and it seemed that disabled people would be the winners after the election.

Labour was radicalising, and many in the Party returned to power in 1974 looking to render accounts with the perceived social failures of the Wilson governments of the 1960s. Further, Labour saw the February election as a validation of the Social Contract, and as an indication of the need to spend on social welfare despite the troubling economic climate. So, too, did the Maria Colwell case increase pressure for Labour to create politically favourable social legislation.⁸ With the Treasury weakened against the demands of social spending departments in a year with two elections, Castle was powerful. As Toynbee and Walker put it: ‘For two years, social policy was Barbara Castle. Until she was sacked by James Callaghan in a settling of old Labour Party scores, she enjoyed two (hyperactive) years.’⁹ Aged 64 by the time of the October election, she would not run again, and the DHSS was her last-chance saloon.¹⁰ She fought Joel Barnett, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, from March through September 1974 for new cash benefits for disabled people, including an HNCIP.¹¹ In the irrationality of a year with two elections, Castle helped win funds for the DHSS, whose existence was already being questioned in the mid-1970s. Toynbee and Walker identified the first two years of Labour’s return to power as a vibrant time for social policy:

Social administration burgeoned as a discipline. Routledge and Kegan Paul published, from 1971 on, fat yearbooks of social policy; they ceased in 1982. Contacts between civil servants, ministers, journalists, academics and the commentariat at large were denser than they had ever been before or have been since. It was the heyday of the magazine New Society – which carried Frank Field’s famous leak of Cabinet discussions about deferring the implementation of the Child Benefit Act 1975. Bertorelli’s restaurant in Charlotte Street rang with specialist luncheon and dining clubs. Barbara Castle’s appointment of Professor David Donnison to chair the Supplementary Benefits Commission and the arrival with her at the Department of Health and Social Security of Professor Brian Abel-Smith personified the close connexion between the social policy community and policy itself. An unnamed senior civil servant at the DHSS declared that resources real-location “showed a clear political initiative, whose ideas had been stimulated by the social sciences.” Here was a British version of the conjunction of “faith, intelligence and good works” described for the era of the Great Society programmes in the United States by Henry J. Aaron.¹²

Glennerster said that Labour’s implementation of the National Pension Plan and Child Benefit amidst a global economic crisis was the ‘high water mark’ of the welfare state.¹³

Perceptions of disabled people in this period focused largely on how their unquestionable need should be addressed given the political, not the foreboding, economic situation, and efforts at new legislation focused on cash benefits as the best way to address the welfare. DIG, Labour, the Conservatives and the media raised expectations of a non-contributory national disability income. Concerned parties envisioned and attempted to influence the form that the cash benefits would take. While there was tension within the Wilson governments over these benefits in 1974 through July 1975, there was overall little tension between expectation and what the benefits appeared to provide.

Timmins and Walker felt there was a consensus about cash benefits between the elections in 1974.¹⁴ How and why were the benefits created as they were against other options, and how effective were they expected to be? Was there a consensus, and if so, what was its extent?

While the cash benefits did contribute to the welfare of many of disabled people, they came under later criticism for creating a ‘Kafka-like world’ of disability provision, as it was known at the time. The CSDP also came under much scrutiny in the mid and late 1970s and early 1980s. The positive psychological impact of the CSDP and the increasing representation of disabled people were victories for disabled people, but did the Act succeed in both improving the welfare of disabled people on the ground and in living up to expectations? Analyses of the effectiveness of the cash benefits and the CSDP are used in this chapter as benchmarks to assess how the welfare state ultimately affected the welfare of disabled people.

Disablement Income Group and a national disability income

While Mary Greaves’ tenure had been about more about research, publications and European interests, DIG under Peter Large – a retired civil servant, engineer and ex-serviceman of the Royal Navy who had acquired polio at 30 and was confined to a wheelchair – focused overwhelmingly on increasing the presence ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of acronyms
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• one: Introduction
• two: The old regime: provision for disabled people before the welfare state
• three: Promotional welfare, 1948–63
• four: The emergence of disabled people, 1964–69
• five: Cinderella of the welfare state: legislation for disabled people, 1970–72
• six: The final days: disability at the end of the welfare state, 1973–79
• seven: The last waltz: epilogue
• eight: Conclusions
• Appendix: Ministerial periods of office
• Bibliography