New Poverty and Political Interests

Abstract

As seen in Chapter 1, the welfare states of the post-war period represented a negotiated truce or settlement among the social classes, but not only among them. They also represented a settlement between the providers of welfare: public and private, religious and secular, local and national, professional and lay, each concerned to maintain and enhance its role and to consolidate its political and cultural influence. The growth of unemployment and social distress during the 1980s has presented each of the parties to these settlements with both opportunities and dilemmas. And the settlements themselves, always fragile and therefore vulnerable, have in many cases been contested, dissolved or disrupted, even if few clear alternatives yet command general support.