The creation of Britain's welfare state in 1948 was an event of major international importance. Designed to provide a concise introduction to the evolution of both the structure of the welfare state and attitudes towards it. Concentrates on five core services: health care, education, social security, the personal social services and housing. For each service it examines the original vision, the attempts to implement this vision, the resulting complexities and controversies and, above all, the impact on individual 'customers'. A wide range of documentary evidence is used, including published...

This concise, readable volume provides original documents from the war years which help the reader evaluate claims that the war introduced a new sense of social solidarity and social idealism which led to a consensus on welfare state reform. It provides important evidence on crime, race relations and anti-semitism, women, health and the family, in addition to examining the Blitz, evacuation and the making of social policy. Special attention is paid to the internal debate within the Conservative party on the Beveridge Report and the proposed national health service. Many of the documents are...

Taking the 'special relationship' as a central theme, the book explores the public and private diplomacy between Britain and the United states in periods of war and peace. Using recently released archives as well as contemporary sources, the areas both of cooperation and conflict are revealed. What emerges is a much more complexed relationship than the one normally portrayed in much of the secondary literature on the subject. The documents also reveal the way the concepts of the 'special relationship' was used as a 'tool of diplomacy' on both sides of the Atlantic.