STATE PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEED

Series Three: Papers from the Mass-Observation Archives at the University of Sussex

Part 1: Topic Collection on Social Welfare and the Beveridge Report, 1939-1949

Part 2: Topic Collections on Welfare and Social Conditions, 1939-1949

Publisher's Note

Series One of State Provision for Social Need made available the papers of the Beveridge Committee from official sources and so offered a rather top-down approach to issues of social welfare in post-war Britain. It also offered very valuable comparative material concerning welfare schemes in Europe and America and records of consultations with leading organisations.

Series Two supplied a personal perspective, comprising William Beveridge’s own papers on Welfare topics from the Health Service and Old Age, to Unemployment and Social Insurance.

This third series of State Provision for Social Need provides gives much more of a bottom-up perspective, comprising hundreds of detailed responses from ordinary folk concerning Welfare topics as gathered by the Mass-Observation organisation.

There are over 80 Topic Collections in the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex covering issues as diverse as Adult & Higher Education; Air Raids; Anti-Semitism; Beveridge Report Surveys; Capital Punishment; Drinking Habits; Happiness; Housing; Leisure; Personal Appearance; Reconstruction; Sexual Behaviour; Squatting; Voting Attitudes and Work. These are surveys and investigations carried out by Mass-Observation mainly between 1937 and 1949, with some later files for the 1960s and 1970s.

Together with the Worktown Collection (published by Adam Matthew Publications as Parts 2 & 3 of the Mass-Observation Archive) these represent the raw matrerial gathered by observers. Some of this was worked up into a polished form in the printed publications (published by Adam Matthew Publications as Part 1 of the Mass-Observation Archive). Brief details also appeared in the File Reports, some of which have been published in microfiche. But this is the first time that Topic Collections have been published in their entirety, giving scholars an opportunity to re-examine and re-interpret the data.

In Part 1 we have brought together eight Topic Collections which have a strong bearing on Social Welfare and the Beveridge Report. These are:

• Reconstruction
• Family Planning
• Health
• Day Nurseries
• Adult and Higher Education
• Post War Hopes
• Public Administration and Social Services in Wartime
• Beveridge Report Surveys

Some consist of a single box. Others run to up to six boxes. All comprise individually lettered files within the boxes, all of which have been filmed in their entirety.

Their aim is set out in one of the early Reconstruction files (TC2/2/D):

“The work we are at present doing on reconstruction originates in numerous requests we have received for information on public attitudes towards Post War reconstruction....
The central aim of what we are doing is to find out what people really feel about events after the war, what their private hopes and fears are about their homes, their jobs, the political mechanism designed to make their wants known, as distinct from what planners, politicians and press-men would like them to feel.”

The material provides illuminating feedback from the general public on all manner of questions posed to them by the investigators. The proposals for the Beveridge Report evoked the following response dated 2 December 1942, in Streatham from a male skilled worker of 50;

“I have read it and think it champion and will take a load off the minds of many people. The most important proposals - well they are all very important but suppose the Retirement Pension and Unemployment increase are perhaps the greatest benefit. It should be passed as quickly as possible. I do not see how anybody can oppose it except perhaps the Insurance Companies but they don’t matter they have feathered their nest long enough”.

There was also a demand for equality in education:

“I reckon every school should come under the state, and every child should have the same sort of education. I don’t think it’s fair one should get more than another; because after all they can’t help it, coming into the world. I’ve a daughter myself, they gave her the option of going into an art school - she was rather clever - but circumstance made it so I couldn’t do it - and I think, why can’t she have the same chance as another child, being so clever; but we couldn’t get help or anything, so I had to turn it down.”

Part 2 continues coverage of welfare related topics with collections on:

• Housing, 1938-1948 (TC1, 10 boxes)
• Work: Registration & Demobilisation, 1939-1946 (TC27, 3 boxes)
• Food, 1937-1952 (TC67, 9 boxes)
• Fuel, 1937-1947 (TC68, 5 boxes)

The scope of the Housing files is remarkably wide and embraces a number of the key themes of social history. Where did people live their lives? How did they live their lives? What was the social geography of the home? What did people think about their homes? All of these issues are addressed as well as pressing issues such as the need to rehome evacuees and people whose houses had been destroyed by enemy bombing. Also the need to build new homes after the war including ribbon development, housing estates, tower blocks and garden cities.

There are files relating to the problems of social environment and the impact that these factors can have on individual development. This is well illustrated by a quotation from a Housing Centre file of 1940:

“If I’d been born in Glasgow, then I’d have been an anarchist … and two feet shorter.”

There are detailed housing surveys for a number of areas such as Stepney in 1941, which describe the average family size (2-4), the number of rooms per 100 families (132 living rooms, 168 bedrooms), average area for a family of four (4390 cubic feet), the average family income (76s 7d), the average rent paid (15s 6d), and the percentage of family members earning a living (49%). These details are provided for hundreds of individual homes, together with household budgets and accounts of household temperature, lighting, use of fuel, pastimes, the length of time taken cooking and cleaning and the regularity of bathing. There is material covering towns and cities across the UK from Portsmouth to Liverpool.

The files on Work deal principally with Unemployment and Demobilisation. The starting point is a survey of unemployment in 1939 and an account of contemporary demonstrations. By 1941, following conscription and national service, the emphasis had changed. In a survey carried out in 1942 one man was asked: “What do you think will happen to the men who are demobilised after the war?” His answer was phlegmatic: “They’ll all be put in the queue for the dole and forgotten.”

World War II was as much an economic war as a military one as is revealed on the files on Food and Fuel. Attacks on convoys, disruption of shipping and concentration on rearmament and the war effort resulted in food and fuel shortages at home. Rationing started as early as 1940 and continued until 1950 as Britain’s ruined economy struggled to cope with post-war realities. The files also reflect an increased emphasis on nutrition during the War with advice on how to create a healthy and sustaining diet with bread, potatoes, carrots and dripping. Hundreds of sample menus show what people ate. There are also illustrations of Mass-Observation’s forays into market research with research exercises carried out regarding margarine, coffee, fish fillets and crisp-bread.

There are good files on fuel use and rationing, 1937-1942, and of the fuel crisis of 1947 that caused the government to appeal to people to “economise in all fuels—even to the point of inconvenience.” To what extent did food, clothes and fuel rationing—and the introduction of prescription charges lead to the downfall of the post-war Labour Government? The files here show clearly the growing public dissatisfaction with such measures.

Housing, Work, Food and Fuel are all key areas for any analysis of welfare and social conditions. These files describe life during and after World War II and capture the concerns and aspirations of the people. They help to explain the desire for home ownership, the interest in gardening, and the need to build a ‘New Britain’ after the war.

The material to be found in The Topic Collections includes not only accounts of interviews but also descriptions of people, places and events, reports with drafts and plans for proposed books, project plans, instructions to investigators, questionnaire replies, internal memoranda, correspondence, printed booklets, photographs, graphs and diagrams, maps, posters, tickets, bills, advertisements and press cuttings. It is indispensable to the researcher who wishes to study the unfiltered views of the “man in the street” with regard to all kinds of contemporary issues and gives an insight into public feeling captured through a qualitative method of approach.

This material will be invaluable to anyone interested in social welfare. The Topic Collections offer a unique grass roots perspective of these issues, offering the genuine views of the public, rather than the wishes of the planners and politicians. The files will be used by historians trying to understand the Labour landslide of 1945, by sociologists and social historians investigating cultural issues, and by those studying Family Planning, Post War Reconstruction and State Provision for Social Need.

NB This material was originally published by Adam Matthew Publications as Part 4 and 5 of the Mass-Observation Archive.

<back