Politics, Policy and Austerity, 1948–57: the Social Context of Mental Health Reform

Abstract

The creation of the welfare state in the period from 1944 to 1948 heralded a new phase in the relationship between the state and society. The significance of that relationship has been the central theme in much of the literature on English social policy in recent years, for example, Ginsburg (1979), Gough (1979), T. H. Marshall (1975), Miliband (1961), Proudfoot (1974) and Titmuss (1968). However, in comparison to the economic problems which faced post-war governments of both parties, the professional and political resistance to state welfare shown during the war was tame. In the Britain of the immediate post-war years, economic and political circumstances and health and welfare policies appeared as uneasy bedfellows.