William Temple Remembered
Author:
Dr Joseph Forde is Honorary Research Fellow in Historical Theology at the Urban Theology Union, Sheffield, UK.
He researches and writes about welfare and Christianity, and is the author of: ‘Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare’ (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2022). |
Archbishop William Temple died on 26th October, 1944, making 2024 the 80th anniversary of his passing. Since then, his legacy, as one of the most influential Anglican social thinkers of the twentieth century, has remained largely intact. The influence that his book of January, 1942, Christianity and Social Order (1), had on bringing about the post-war welfare state settlement, is, in large part, the reason for that. In it, Temple had set out ambitious - yet practical - ideas for what a welfare state might look like; ideas that contributed to the liberal thinking of William Beveridge and his report of November, 1942, Social Insurance and Allied Services,(2) that modelled the post-war, welfare state project.
Temple’s vision of a welfare state, though rooted in the reformist strand of the Anglican Socialist tradition that can be traced back to the thinking of F.D. Maurice (1805-1872), built on work that had already been undertaken to improve the lot of the disadvantaged by Asquith’s Liberal administrations from 1908 to 1916. Lloyd George, Asquith’s Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1908 and 1915, had established a more progressive income tax regime to fund old age pensions, and provide some redistributive assistance to the unemployed and the wider pool of disadvantaged. Temple’s vision was more ambitious in scope and resourcing, however.
Examples of his welfarism were how he called for the state to eradicate unemployment through public works; for every citizen to have a legally enforced voice in the conduct of the business or industry in which they work, and the knowledge that their labour is directed to the wellbeing of the community; for every child to find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignity and to have the opportunity for an education up to the age of 18; for family allowances to be paid to mothers and for milk and a good meal a day to be provided at school; for every citizen to be secure in possession of such income as would enable them to maintain a home and bring up children in good living conditions; and for every citizen to be enabled to have sufficient daily leisure to enjoy a full personal life, with such interests and activities as their tasks and talents may direct.
William Beveridge’s focus on the need to slay what he had described as ‘the five giants’; these being, Ignorance, Want, Squalor, Idealness and Disease, can be seen to embody much of Temple’s welfare statist thinking. This was because it was - in part - shaped by discussions he had had with Temple along these lines. They had been friends whilst undergraduates at Balliol College, Oxford, and their friendship had remained strong in the years since. It is a testament to the influence that Temple and Beveridge’s welfare statist thinking was to have on successive post-war Labour and Conservative governments, that some of these ideas do not seem as radical today as they did at the time when they were written, having been either fully or partly realised in the years that followed.
Temple and Beveridge’s Vision of a Welfare State
Temple and Beveridge’s vision of a welfare state, has been described as having twin pillars: the social security system and the National Health Service. Under the Attlee administration of 1945-51, via several major pieces of legislation such as the Family Allowance Act 1945, the National Insurance Industrial Injuries Act 1946 and the National Insurance Act 1946, the range of social security provision was considerably extended. In addition, the National Health Service Acts of 1946, 1947 and 1948 paved the way for the establishment of a National Health Service across all parts of the United Kingdom. In July 1948, this was brought about, with cradle-to-grave healthcare coverage free at the point of delivery and for all. The Education Act of 1944 was largely implemented by the Attlee government, and provided for a raised school leaving age of fifteen and a reformed system of secondary education. The National Assistance Act of 1948 established a National Assistance Board to assume national responsibility for those in need who had previously been dealt with by the local Public Assistance Committees. The New Towns Act of 1946 led to a substantial expansion of housing provision via the creation of fourteen new towns across Britain, followed by the Housing Act of 1949 that enabled local authorities to acquire houses for renovation and improvement with a subsidy from the Exchequer.
What is more, with respect to Temple and Beveridge’s goal of achieving and maintaining full employment - high levels of unemployment having been the scourge after the First World War - Attlee’s administration had tackled this head on, by adopting an economic policy that was heavily state controlled and directed. Ports, canals, railways, airways, coal, gas and electricity, as well as the Bank of England, were taken under state control. Keynesian management of the economy was the economic tool deployed, with a combination of increases in taxation - especially for the better-off - and use of the peace dividend derived from reductions in defence expenditure from five billion pounds in 1945 to less than one billion in 1950, to fund the new welfare services. In the two decades following the end of the war, unemployment rarely rose above two per cent and thus Beveridge’s target of less than three per cent as constituting full employment was achieved.
Overall, this response by the Attlee administration to slaying Beveridge’s five giants, was seen by many as broadly commensurate with the scale of the task, and also impressive in terms of its delivery of the welfarist goals that inspired it. Thus, it came to significantly define the political landscape in the decades that followed up to 1976; a period that has been described as one of ‘welfare consensus’; which is to say, a period when Temple and Beveridge’s vision of a welfare state was - in large part - realised.
However, in the early 1970s, the British economy entered a period of economic downturn. With the quadrupling of oil prices in the mid-1970s leading to a major dip in economic growth and high levels of inflation, the Callaghan, Labour government made substantial cuts to public expenditure in return for an IMF loan. Callaghan would tell Labour Party members in a speech in Blackpool delivered in 1976: ‘we used to think you could spend your way out of a recession. … I tell you in all candour that option no longer exists.’ Thus, the scene was set for a sea change in government policy with the election of the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s leadership on 4 May, 1979. During the years that followed, the post-war welfare state consensus that Temple and Beveridge had done so much to help bring about, was to cut less ice with successive Conservative and Labour administrations.
There were some notable reversals. For example, the 1982 Social Security and Housing Benefit Act that was brought in under Margaret Thatcher’s administration was one, which included reductions to social security benefits by removing earnings related supplements. Another, was the decision, taken by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ administration in 2007, to gradually increase the retirement age from 65 to 68. A third, was a series of cuts to the real terms funding of parts of the Welfare State - particularly those being provided by Local Government - that occurred during the period of austerity that had been launched by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Coalition Government in 2010. This was in response to the fiscal challenges stemming from the financial crash of 2008, some of which, in real terms, have not been reversed. Today, the funding of the Welfare State remains challenging, in large part owing to the cost of living crisis stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the pressure it has put on the public purse.
Temple’s Vision for Welfare and the Welfare State Today
However, in the UK, we still have a publicly funded National Health Service, free at the point of delivery; a publicly funded education system, where over 90% of 16 & 17 year olds are in full time education or an apprenticeship; a publicly funded system of higher education, where 37.5 % of 18 year olds enroll each year; a publicly subsided level of provision of social housing, in which 17% of the population live. Moreover, we have a publicly funded - inflation linked - pension scheme for our senior citizens; an economy with low levels of unemployment, and, for those who are unemployed, publicly funded, state provided financial assistance; family allowances are still being paid to mothers with children; and there is a statutory, minimum holiday entitlement of 28 days for all those in fulltime work. All of these state welfare interventions, can, in some, key, respects, be traced back to the thinking of Archbishop William Temple, and his vision of a society where the state would become, in his words, ‘the Community of Communities’, or, what he called, ‘the administrative organ of the community’. It is for this reason that he is often thought of as being one of the most radical, social thinkers of the twentieth century, with a legacy that remains largely undiminished by subsequent events.
(1) W. Temple, Christianity and Social Order (1942) ( London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1971)
(2) W.H. Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services ( London: HMSO,1942)
Dr Joseph Forde is Honorary Research Fellow in Historical Theology at the Urban Theology Union, Sheffield, UK. He researches and writes about welfare and Christianity, and is the author of: ‘Before and Beyond the ‘Big Society’: John Milbank and the Church of England’s Approach to Welfare’ (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2022).
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Dr Joseph Forde |