Discovering Disability: The General Classes of Disabled People and the Classic Welfare State, 1948-1964

D I S C O V E R I N G D I S A B I L I T Y :T H E G E N E R A L C L A S S E S O F

D I S A B L E D P E O P L E A N D T H E

C L A S S I C W E L F A R E S T A T E ,1 9 4 8 – 1 9 6 4J A M E E L H A M P T O N

The recognition of the needs of disabled people was a major feature of theexpansion of statutory welfare in twentieth-century Britain. Beginning with therecognition of the special needs of disabled school children in the final decade ofthe nineteenth century, the state took on the welfare of groups of disabled peopleperceived to be exceptionally disadvantaged and worthy of statutory welfare.Blind people and disabled ex-servicemen of the First World War were recognizedin legislation in the interwar years. Tort law and compensation provided cashbenefits and rehabilitation schemes for those injured at work. The unprecedentedexpansion of statutory welfare in Britain during and after the Second World Warbrought the possibility of new provision in cash and services for all disabledpeople. Yet, despite the rhetoric of universalism, the welfare of the “generalclasses” of disabled people received little consideration in the classic welfare-statesettlement of 1943 to 1948.1

The general classes were defined as physically disabled adults whose disable-ment did not result from combat or industrial injury, excluding blind and deafpeople, and mentally ill people, for whom separate provisions were made. Therewere a great number of disabling conditions within this heterogeneous group. Themost common conditions were diseases of bones and musculoskeletal conditions,

Dr. Jameel Hampton completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2011. He also lectured inModern Irish History at Campion College, University of Regina, Canada.

1. The term “classic welfare state” has been used by Anne Digby and others to refer to thepost-Second World War welfare state that was created between 1943 and 1948 and endedwith the imposition of cash limits on spending and the abandonment of full employment in1975 and 1976. This was a period of faith in increased statutory welfare and confidence in thestate to defeat economic problems and maintain full or near-full employment. See Anne Digby,British Welfare Policy: Workhouse to Workfare, London: Faber and Faber, 1989.

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central nervous-system disorders, and circulatory and respiratory difficulties.Other conditions included amputations, diseases of the digestive system, andallergic, endocrine, metabolic, and nutritional diseases. The first officialattempts at quantification in the later 1960s identified 2.1 million people in thiscategory.2

Scholars agree that the period from 1948 to 1964 was distinct in the devel-opment of statutory welfare for the general classes. Sainsbury identified theperiod as one of “promotional welfare”: statutory services for the generalclasses—like recreational opportunities, transportation, employment training,and household adaptations—were to promote a disabled person’s ability to par-ticipate more fully in all aspects of life and support, not supplant, non-statutoryefforts.3 Further, in agreement with Younghusband’s Social Work in Britain,1950–1975 (1978), Bridgen and Lowe, Borsay, and Sainsbury have identified aslow development of statutory services for the general classes in this period.4 AsFinlayson pointed out, non-statutory groups continued their traditional philan-thropic activities despite the major expansion of statutory welfare, and non-statutory welfare for all disabled people greatly expanded in the two decadesafter the Second World War.5 For statutory welfare, Lowe and Bridgen identi-fied the period as one of “make do and mend” as there was no new legislationfor the general classes under thirteen years of Conservative governments.6 Inthis absence of new legislation, services developed under the 1948 NationalAssistance Act. There has been no investigation of this idea of slow progressbased on extant documents at the British National Archive, the archives of theConservative and Labour Parties, and the archives of non-statutory groups atthe University of Warwick’s Modern Records Centre. After a brief discussion of

2. Amelia Harris, Handicapped and Impaired in Britain, Part One, London: H.M.S.O., 1971,5–7.

3. Sally Sainsbury, “Disabled People and the Personal Social Services,” in David Gladstone, ed.,British Social Welfare: Past, Present, and Future, London: University College London Press,1995, 183–95: 184–7.

4. Francis Eileen Younghusband, Social Work in Britain, 1950–1975: A Follow-Up Study,London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978, 207; Anne Borsay, Disability and Social Policy inBritain since 1750: A History of Exclusion, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 160–8;Paul Bridgen and Rodney Lowe, Welfare Policy under the Conservatives, 1951–1964: AGuide to Documents in the Public Records Office, London: Public Records Office, 1998, 43;Sainsbury, “Disabled People,” 184.

5. Geoffrey Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Social Welfare in Britain, 1830–1990, Oxford: OxfordUP, 1994, 327–9.

6. Bridgen and Lowe, Guide to Documents, 44.

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the current state-of-play in modern British disability history, the first part of thisarticle will discuss how and why the general classes received little particularexamination in the classic welfare settlement before examining the developmentof services on the ground, largely through materials at these archives.

Widespread public and political recognition of the general classes and theirwelfare began in the mid-1960s with the emergence of powerful pressure groupactivity and public awareness, increasingly sophisticated pressure in the House ofCommons, a desire within Labour and the Conservatives to try to help theneediest groups in a period of real and perceived affluence, and an honestrecognition of how the classic welfare state settlement had largely left out thegeneral classes. There has been no investigation, by historians or social scientists,of the assumption that the state, the House of Commons, the media, the public,or any particular government did not discover this group until the middle of the1960s. How, then, was the welfare of the general classes perceived by these groupsbetween 1948 and 1964 and what effect did these perceptions have on thedevelopment of policy? The second part of this article will investigate thisquestion.

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Disability is largely absent from major works dealing with the classic welfare stateor welfare in the twentieth century.7 It is absent as well from considerations ofBritish welfare in the longue durée.8 Further, most major works on the history ofBritish welfare do not contain analyses of the Personal Social Services (P.S.S.), adifficult to define category of services for disparate and traditionally disadvan-taged groups: abused and delinquent children, elderly poor people, and mentallyand physically disabled people. Lowe’s otherwise comprehensive Welfare State inBritain since 1945 is an example of this neglect. The chapter on the P.S.S. deals

7. See Michael Hill, The Welfare State in Britain: A Political History since 1945, Aldershot:Edward Elgar, 1993; David Gladstone, The Twentieth-Century Welfare State, Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 1999; Howard Glennerster, British Social Policy since 1945, Oxford:Wiley-Blackwell, 2000; Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants: A Biography of the WelfareState, London: Harper Collins, 2001; Rodney Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain since 1945,Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

8. See Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People,1700–1948, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007; Derek Fraser, The Evolution of the BritishWelfare State: A History of Policy since the Industrial Revolution, Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2009; Bernard Harris, The Origins of the British Welfare State: Society, Stateand Social Welfare in England and Wales, 1800–1945, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,2004.

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almost exclusively with developments in services for children and elderly peopleand devotes a mere two paragraphs to disability in describing the failures of the1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act.9

There are several reasons for the lack of work on disability and statutorywelfare. Notwithstanding the rhetoric of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, infor-mal welfare in the form of the efforts of friends, families, and communities wasintended, and continued, to provide a greater portion of disabled people’swelfare after 1945; it is understandable that historical study of statutory welfareafter 1945 has tended not to address the subject. Disability is a poor relationcompared to other areas of the classic welfare state with more contemporary,historical, and popular esteem like the National Health Service (N.H.S.) or childdelinquency. As Borsay pointed out, the neglect of disability is caused in part bythe influence of sociology in disability studies: sociology as a discipline prefersconceptual analyses, theories, and universality, whereas history as a disciplinehas tended to prefer detail, individual agency, and empiricism.10 Disability hastraditionally received little consideration from historians of twentieth centuryBritish welfare.

Disability, however, has developed rapidly in the last decade as a major areaof enquiry for twentieth-century British historians. There has been recent interestin learning disabilities and mental illness. For physical disability, the only com-prehensive study to date is Borsay’s Disability and Social Policy in Britain since1750 of 2004.11 Her contention that those disabled people unable to workreceived little meaningful financial relief throughout the classic welfare state is agood basis for more particular examinations of how and why there was littlechange in this area.12 Emancipatory Disability Studies offers valuable sociologi-cal and activist perspectives on the systematic exclusion of disabled people inindustrialized society, but tends to focus on institutionalism and exclusion anddoes not usually offer empirical analyses within relevant historical contexts.13

In contrast, there has been much recent historical interest in disabled

9. Lowe, Welfare State, 283.

10. Anne Borsay, “History, Power and Identity,” in Colin Barnes, Geof Mercer, and MikeOliver, eds, Disability Studies Today, Cambridge: Polity, 2002, 98–120: 98–9.

11. Borsay, Disability and Social Policy.

12. Ibid., 189–91.

13. Elizabeth Bredberg, “Writing Disability History: Problems, Perspectives and Sources,” Dis-ability and Society 2, 1999, 189–201; Brendan J. Gleeson, “Disability Studies: A HistoricalMaterialist View,” Disability and Society 2, 1997, 179–202.


ex-servicemen.14 A number of works specifically address disabled ex-servicemenand gender.15 Additionally, three major editions examine British and foreigndisability in the modern period.16 Disabled people and twentieth-century welfareis evidently a burgeoning field of historical enquiry.

In the absence of targeted legislation for the general classes in the classicwelfare-state settlement, services developed under the 1948 National AssistanceAct. The welfare of this group largely became the responsibility of formal (vol-untary organizations) and informal non-statutory welfare from 1948 to 1964. Infour recent books on voluntary groups in Modern Britain, however, disability isnot examined.17 Measuring the activity, size, or impact of the voluntary sector inany period is difficult as voluntary activity tends to defy adequate comprehensivedescription, quantification, or measurement of qualitative impact: it is difficult to

14. Julie Anderson, “Turned into Taxpayers: Paraplegia, Rehabilitation and Sport at StokeMandeville, 1944–1956,” Journal of Contemporary History 38, 2003, 461–75; Julie Ander-son and Neil Pemberton, “Walking Alone: Aiding the War and Civilian Blind in theInter-war Period,” European Review of History 14, 2007, 459–79; Amanda Bergen, “TheBlind, the Deaf and the Halt: Physical Disability, the Poor Law and Charity c.1830–1890,with Particular Reference to the County of Yorkshire,” unpublished Ph.D. diss., Universityof Leeds, 2006; Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, andthe First World War, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009; Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home:Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939, Berkeley, CA: U. of California P.,2001; Seth Koven, “Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Sol-diers and the Great War in Great Britain,” American Historical Review 99, 1994, 1167–1202; Meaghan Kowalsky, “‘This Honourable Obligation’: The King’s National RollScheme for Disabled Ex-Servicemen, 1915–1944,” European Review of History 14, 2007,567–84; Jessica Meyer, “Not Septimus Now: Wives of Disabled Veterans and CulturalMemory of the First World War in Britain,” Women’s History Review 1, 2004, 117–38;Jeffrey Reznik, Healing the Nation: The Culture of Caregiving in Britain During the GreatWar, Manchester: Manchester UP, 2011.

15. Julie Anderson, “British Women, Disability and the Second World War,” ContemporaryBritish History 20, 2006, 37–53; Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies,Britain, and the Great War, London: Reaktion, 1996; Wendy Jane Gagen, “Remastering theBody, Renegotiating Gender: Physical Disability and Masculinity during the First WorldWar, the Case of J. B. Middlebrook,” European Review of History 14, 2007, 525–41.

16. Waltraud Ernst, ed., Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and CulturalHistories of Norms and Normativity, New York: Routledge, 2006; David M. Turner andKevin Stagg, eds, Social Histories of Disability and Deformity, New York: Routledge, 2006;Nick Watson, ed., Disability, New York: Routledge, 2007.

17. Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton, and James McKay, eds, NGOs in Contemporary Britain:Non-State Actors in Society and Politics since 1945, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009;Matthew Hilton and James McKay, eds, The Ages of Voluntarism: How We Got to the BigSociety, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011; Melanie Oppenheimer and Nicolas Deakin, eds,Beveridge and Voluntary Action in Britain and the Wider British World, Manchester:Manchester UP, 2011; Colin Rochester, George Campbell Gosling, Alison Penn, and MetaZimmeck, eds, Understanding the Roots of Voluntary Action: Historical Perspectives onCurrent Social Policy, Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2011.


measure the often-undocumented efforts of local voluntary groups. Further, it isimpossible to quantify the contributions of informal welfare. For the period underexamination in this article, Finlayson’s methodology for the 1960s and 1970s isuseful:

It is one thing to note the newly invigorated voluntary sector; it is anotherto measure it with any accuracy. . . . The statistical method is, as ever,fraught with difficulties; and this is also true of any effort to examine thevoluntary sector in terms of the number of voluntary organizations inexistence. It is impossible to provide a comprehensive list. All that can bedone is to provide exemplar material—and this does, at least, have the meritof illustrating the range of voluntary organizations that originated in the1960s and nineteen-seventies and the variety or roles that they could play.18

This article’s discussion of the development of local statutory services and thecontributions of voluntary organisations to the welfare of the general classesattempts to provide such “exemplar material” for the 1948 to 1964 period.

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Clement Attlee’s Labour governments of 1945–1951 had an unprecedentedmandate to reduce inequality in British society through social welfare. The SecondWorld War broke down traditional attitudes against collectivist efforts; as PeterBaldwin put it, “The bombing raids indiscriminate destruction, blightingBloomsbury as thoroughly as Brixton, prepared the ground psychologically for awider sharing of risk.”19 Labour had a large majority in the House of Commonsafter the 1945 election, and the nature of the British parliamentary system, wherethe ruling party has far greater effective power than would be possible in conti-nental Europe or the United States, contributed to the strength of their mandate.Indeed, the amount of social legislation passed during the classic welfare settle-ment was very likely more extensive than that of any other government in atwentieth-century democratic nation and included the 1944 National EducationAct, the 1945 Family Allowances Act, the 1946 National Insurance Act, the 1946New Towns Act, and the creation of the National Health Service (N.H.S.)in 1948.

18. Finlayson, Citizen, State, and Social Welfare, 287–8.

19. Peter Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases in the European Welfare State,1875–1975, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990, 15–6.


The general classes, however, were addressed less by direct considerationfor their situation and more by their comparative exclusion from the classicwelfare-state settlement. Compared to other P.S.S. groups, as well as disabledex-servicemen and industrially injured disabled people, they lacked the requisitefactors for significant inclusion in statutory provision at the time. In general, thosedisabled people whose physical impairment came not because of combat orindustrial injury had no political profile; unlike disabled ex-servicemen, theyelicited no emotional sentiment from the experience of the Second World War.Compared to blind people, disabled ex-servicemen, and industrially injured dis-abled people, the general classes also had no tradition of targeted statutoryprovision before the war other than the Poor Law.20 There was no major repre-sentation outside government, as with the National League of the Blind (N.L.B.)that developed between the wars.21 Nor was there representation inside thegovernment or the House of Commons. Until the middle 1960s, the generalclasses did not have the levels of representation belonging to disabled ex-servicemen, industrially injured disabled people, or blind people.

The 1946 National Insurance Act and the 1946 Industrial Injuries Act excludedthose disabled people unable to sustain permanent full-time employment. Underthe 1948 National Assistance Act, the centrally based National Assistance Boardassumed responsibility for dispensing National Assistance cash benefits to unem-ployed people. The 1947 Welfare Services Act, however, had conferred respon-sibility for welfare services on local authorities and maintained the Poor Lawtradition of localism in the classic welfare state: welfare services for disabledpeople continued to be the responsibility of local authorities as established by the1929 Local Government Act.22 Despite the comments of Aneurin Bevan (Ministerof Health from 3 August 1945 to 17 January 1951), and others, the NationalAssistance Act was not the death of the Poor Law, and the provision of services

20. The 1897 Industrial Injuries Act established the employer’s responsibility to compensatework-related disablement. The poor health of British soldiers revealed by the Boer Warcaused many to believe that the state must take on a major role in the health and welfareof disabled ex-servicemen. With some 750,000 permanently disabled servicemen of theFirst World War, an unprecedented number, many statutory and non-statutory welfareprogrammes were created including employment, welfare services, pensions, and specialmedical schemes. The separation of blind people was created by the 1920 Blind Persons Actrequiring local authorities to form registers and provide suitable employment and welfareservices for blind people.

21. Matthias Reiss, “Forgotten Pioneers of the National Protest March: The National League ofthe Blind’s Marches to London, 1920 and 1936,” Labour History Review 2, 2005, 133–65.

22. Pat Thane, Foundations of the Welfare State, London: Longman, 1982, 188.


for the general classes in the classic welfare-state settlement was more a case ofcontinuity than change. Under Parts 3 and 4 of the Act, local authorities weregiven two general duties: to provide accommodation for elderly and chronicallydisabled people and temporary accommodation for those in urgent need.

Section 29 of Part 3 dealt with the functions of local authorities’ services forblind, deaf, and elderly people and the general classes, and Section 30 statedbriefly that they could employ and subsidize non-statutory bodies to help fulfilSection 29. Local authorities were to create services for disabled people as out-lined by the Minister of Health, and Section 29 listed a massive range of servicesthat local authorities could offer including home visits, workshops, aid in mar-keting handicrafts, social centres, recreational outings, and the compilation of aregister of disabled people in their jurisdiction. It may have been that in theabsence of a desire to develop services, the Ministry of Health felt that detail at therhetorical level could fill the void. With its greater tradition of statutory welfareand public esteem, terms for blind people were immediately made mandatory,while schemes for deaf and elderly people and the general classes were permissive.

Muriel Brown has argued that a hysterical compulsion at the rhetorical level todestroy the Poor Law dominated the forming of the National Assistance Act anddistracted attention from tangible realities including the nature and scope ofservices that local authorities could realistically provide.23 Accommodation underParts 3 and 4 could continue apace from before the war. So too could otherexisting local services under the 1929 Local Government Act. There was,however, no consideration of how the new broader goals for services outlined inSection 29 could be achieved.24 Brown argued that provision for groups underPart 3 were “not the product of clear thinking on the needs of the groups theywere to serve so much as the almost casual outcome of the tidying-up of the socialservice scene after the major reorganization had taken place.”25 The architect ofthe welfare state, William Beveridge (1879–1963), dealt with the needs of physi-cally disabled people—including blind and deaf people, and the general classes—under the heading “the needs that remain in a social service state,” and, given thecircumstances of the period, Beveridge felt this was an area ripe for voluntarism:

23. Muriel Brown, “The Development of Local Authority Welfare Services,” Ph.D. diss.,University of Manchester, 1971, 16, 18, 22.

24. This was bemoaned by local authorities, voluntary groups, and the Conservative Party.Conservative Party Archive [from here: C.P.A.]: Conservative Research Department 2/31/1[from here C.R.D.]. Report on the Problems of Old People, 30 April 1951.

25. Brown, “Development,” 14–5.


The physically handicapped people of Britain present a problem large inscale, distressing in the degree of the suffering of individuals, and still moredistressing in the deficiency of provision to alleviate suffering. . . . The factthat with so much legislation and so much expenditure the provision in boththese fields [he refers here to tuberculosis and mental illness, author’s note]should be unsatisfactory is a striking illustration of the need of somethingbeyond legislation and money for curing social ills.26

One could argue that Beveridge’s comments on the welfare of the generalclasses, and their timing in relation to the overall settlement, were as Browndescribed. There was also Parker’s damning identification of the Act as “a feebleinstrument for such a grand design.”27 More broadly speaking, the classic welfaresettlement focused largely on the employment of disabled people, and there wascomparatively little concentration on the National Assistance Act.

The power of the trades unions and Ernest Bevin (Minister of Labour andNational Service from 13 May 1940 to 23 May 1945) directed the terms of the1943 Tomlinson Committee on the Rehabilitation and Resettlement of the Dis-abled and the subsequent 1944 Disabled Persons Employment Act. Those disabledpeople able to work contributed to National Insurance and were not viewed as asocial expense. Rehabilitation of disabled workers was emphasised, but only sofar as they did not compete with able-bodied workers. As such, Industrial Reha-bilitation Units (I.R.U.) and disablement registers were established, and by 1950,900,000 had registered.28 An examination of employment-based welfare for dis-abled people is beyond the scope of this article, but it is important to note that thewelfare of disabled people in the period was seen often in terms of work becauseof the high employment of disabled people during the Second World War and thedesire to limit social welfare expenditure.29

Little archival evidence exists documenting opinions on disability duringthe Attlee governments, but it is clear that non-statutory welfare was seen as

26. William Beveridge, Voluntary Action: A Report on Methods of Social Advance, London:George Allen and Unwin, 1948, 243–4.

27. Julia Parker, Local Authority Health and Welfare Services, London: George Allen andUnwin, 1965, 108.

28. Julie Anderson, War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: Soul of a Nation, Manchester:Manchester UP, 2011, 47.

29. Examining employment-based welfare for disabled people in the 1950s and 1960s is asignificant undertaking as the resources in LAB files at the National Archive [from here N.A.]are detailed and plentiful. There is also the massive archive of the Trades Unions Congressat the Warwick Modern Records Centre [from here: M.R.C.].


appropriate for those disabled people who were not ex-servicemen or industriallyinjured. The N.L.B. protested that blind people could receive vastly differentbenefits based on the cause of loss of sight: combat, industrial injury, or other.30

While blind people had privileged status amongst other physically disabledpeople, the Labour Party rejected a general blindness allowance under the samereasoning that made greater provision for the general classes improbable: the highpotential expenditure and the fact that a universal disablement allowance wouldbetray the contributory basis of National Insurance.31 These considerations wereexpressed in a 1948 Ministry of National Insurance letter to the head of theN.L.B.:

There is of course no more reason why a born-blind person should be giventhe same pension afforded to a war-blinded person than there would be forgiving a born-crippled person the pension afforded to a war crippled person.The effect would be that every blind adult would be entitled, irrespective ofmeans, to a pension of at least 45 s[hilling] a week.32

It is additionally evident here that ex-servicemen enjoyed a privileged status inthe hierarchy of disabled people deserving of welfare.

It is reasonable to assume that the potentially large cost of cash benefits forSection 29 groups was another reason that Labour did not seek to build on theclassic welfare-state settlement. With the future of voluntary activity in questionafter the creation of the classic welfare state, The Nuffield Social ReconstructionSurvey was one of several opinions emphasizing that the P.S.S. should becomethe special territory of voluntary agencies.33 Notwithstanding the anti-voluntarysoundings of some major Labour figures, all recognized the necessity and persis-tence of non-statutory efforts in the post-war world despite the massive expansionof statutory welfare. Under both the Labour and Conservative governments of1948 to 1964, non-employment based statutory welfare was limited largely toPart 3 of the National Assistance Act, and while there was no new legislation for

30. Labour History Archive [from here: L.H.A.]: GS/BLI/41, T. H. Smith [N.L.B.] to MorganPhillips [Secretary of the Labour Party], 24 October 1949.

31. L.H.A.: GS/BLI/20, Copy of letter from T. H. Smith to Morgan Phillips, 6 January1948; L.H.A.: GS/BLI/58, Copy of letter from T. H. Smith to Morgan Phillips, 31 May1950.

32. L.H.A.: GS/BLI/58, Copy of letter from T. H. Smith to Morgan Phillips, Date Unknown.

33. Also see Anne Francis Claudine Bourdillon, Voluntary Social Services: Their Place in theModern State, London: Methuen, 1945, 29, 111.


the general classes as there was for other P.S.S. groups in the period, there wassome development, albeit slow, in services on the ground.

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The overarching trend in the development of welfare services from 1948 to 1964was the move from residential to community. With little new direction from theMinistry of Health, local authorities originally focused on residential care. Agrowing disenchantment with institutions and the development of increased inter-est in the general classes led to a mutually reinforcing desire for community careand the prevention of social exclusion that was often a result of residential care.As Charles Webster pointed out, the idea of community care was inherited frombefore the Second World War by the classic welfare state, and from the beginningof the N.H.S., hospitals could only manage costs through preventive and outpa-tient community care.34 The widespread pervasiveness of desire amongst thegeneral classes for statutory provision in cash and services was first revealed enmasse by the Disablement Income Group (D.I.G.) in the middle of the 1960s.With no significant new provision developed between 1948 and 1964, it is verylikely that this demand was latent. Notwithstanding slow progress in the devel-opment of services, the idea that the welfare of the general classes should andwould come under the responsibility of statutory community-based services grewstronger from the middle 1950s onward.

Appointed in March 1949, the Advisory Council on the Welfare of Handi-capped Persons was to inform the Minister of Health on Section 29 groups. Thecouncil was divided into four sub-committees and the “Cripples Council,” as itwas known, dealt with the general classes.35 The program of study for thesub-committees comprised local authorities’ compilation and maintenance of aclassified register, a statutory advisory service for the general classes, recreationand social centres, and household aids and amenities. In keeping with the fullemployment emphasis of the period, the Advisory Council was concerned almostwholly with getting disabled people into work.36 While responsible for studying the

34. Charles Webster, The Health Services since the War, vol. 2: Government and Health Care:The National Health Service, 1958–1979, London: H.M.S.O., 1996, 109.

35. The Mental Health Sub-Committee was added later. Circular 87/48 made it clear thatprovision for the general classes was the lowest priority of the three original groups (seeMinistry of Health Circular 87/48, 7 June 1948; N.A., MH 57/515, Vosper to Sir CecilOakes, 12 February 1957). The Council’s mandate was until 31 March 1957, but ceased tooperate after the Piercy Committee began its deliberations.

36. N.A., MH 57/480, Minutes of Advisory Council Meeting, 14 July 1949.


overall welfare of the general classes under Section 29, the Cripples Council choseto focus mostly on the day-to-day difficulties of epilepsy. Indeed, the CripplesCouncil was later accused by Dennis Vosper (Minister of Health from 17 January1957 to 16 September 1957) of being narrow and limited in its interests.37 TheCripples Council recommended little beyond the need for the Ministry to producea model scheme for local authorities and outline the range of potential services.

Circular 32/51 was the product of the Cripples Council’s recommendation andthe concern about the lack of local sheltered employment schemes. Despite thevery small numbers of disabled people in these employment schemes, I.R.U., andRemploy in the 1950s, it was thought throughout the decade that they wouldemploy large numbers of disabled people.38 On the ground, only four of 146 localauthorities in England and Wales had schemes before the Circular. The Circularindicated the Ministry’s readiness to review schemes for deaf people and thegeneral classes, encouraged cooperation with voluntary bodies, and urged greaterprovision for blind people. Consistent with the hierarchy of welfare for disabledpeople, the Circular provided two model schemes as appendices—one for deafpeople and one for the general classes—and stated that it was not mandatory toprovide both.39 The model schemes for deaf people were exactly that: a long listof all the services a local authority might offer under Section 29.40 Similar toSection 29, it is very likely that detail at the rhetorical level was intended tocompensate for a lack of desire on the part of central government to quicklydevelop services. The general classes’ scheme was comparatively paltry as it onlyidentified ways that they could be encouraged to attain employment.

Notwithstanding its permissive nature, Circular 32/51 seems to have stimu-lated local authorities to create schemes: 52 local authorities produced schemes in1952 and 86 of 146 authorities had produced schemes by 1954.41 Speaking inMay 1953, Ian Macleod (Minister of Health from 7 May 1952 to 19 December

37. N.A., MH 57/515, Vosper to Sir Cecil Oakes, 12 February 1957.

38. Remploy was a statutory body that provided employment and job placement for disabledpeople. It employed 5,714 disabled people in 1952 and 6,200 in 1960. M.R.C.: MSS.292B/149.93/5, 292/146.92/4.

39. As with blind people, there was a tradition from the nineteenth century of special statutoryprovision for deaf people (see Borsay, Disability and Social Policy, 37).

40. Ministry of Health Circular 32/51, 28 August 1951; N.A., LAB 20/871, Welfare of the Deaf,Cripples, Etc. Papers Relating to the Preparation of Schemes by Local Authorities, undated,1951.

41. N.A., MH 55/2636, National Assistance Act, 1948, Schemes under Section 29 for theWelfare of Handicapped Persons of the “General Classes” and of the Deaf and Dumb, 12June 1957.


1955), said it was inadequate that only one-half of local authorities had submittedschemes, and while recognizing their embattled financial and human resources,asked them to make a start in any way they could.42 By the end of 1955, 106 of146 local authorities—and an additional ten by the end of 1956—had schemesapproved by the Ministry of Health. Many local authorities worked in conjunc-tion with voluntary organizations to organize home visits and authorities offereda range of different promotional welfare services including holidays, recreationalcentres, and the teaching and marketing of handicrafts. Several authorities offeredhousehold adaptations and provided adapted vehicles. These things said, it is verylikely that the extent of services being offered was exaggerated and that someservices existed only on paper.

An important part of the information acquired and reported by the Ministryof Health in 1955 and 1956 was that it displayed a feeling, both in the localitiesand within the Ministry, that these activities were only a temporary phasebefore greater statutory provision or the state’s complete takeover of the welfareof all disabled people.43 These feelings grew stronger and more oft mentionedthroughout the decade, as is evident from the Ministry of Health’s 1959 AnnualReport:

The voluntary societies have laid the foundations on which the state isbuilding a scheme, which is fine in conception and should be most valuableto the community. The societies still need, however, the support of thepublic to enable them with their long and valuable experience to assist and,when necessary, to stimulate the state scheme in order to bring it to its fullfruition. The period of transition from voluntary to State control mustnecessarily be a difficult one, and it is urgent that the support which hasbeen given to societies in the past should not be withdrawn when their needis so great.44

In the 1950s and 1960s, some writers perceived the historical balance ofwelfare between non-statutory efforts and the state as a “collective train” or a“welfare state escalator”: whether considered in a long term structural frameworkbeginning with Britain’s industrial evolution, or from 1945 to 1979 by latercommentators, the “evolution” or “rise” of British welfare meant an irresistible

42. “Welfare of Disabled. Authorities Urged to Submit Schemes,” The Times, 30 May 1953.

43. Ministry of Health Annual Report 1955; Ministry of Health Annual Report 1956.

44. Ministry of Health Annual Report 1959.


movement of responsibility toward the state.45 For the general classes, this beliefin increasing statutory control was often stated explicitly and one gets a sense ofit implicitly when reading archival documents from the period.

By 1957, 124 of 146 local authorities had approved schemes. The mostcommon services provided were the teaching of handicrafts, social opportunities,home adaptations, and holidays.46 Ministry of Health Annual Reports from 1957to 1959 identified the increasing number of the general classes on local registers.47

The 1959 Younghusband Report was said to have “stimulated a fresh attitude tothe needs of the handicapped” and that “comprehensive community care” was theobjective for statutory welfare services.48 Also mentioned were the need forservices for the general classes to catch up to those for blind and deaf people andthe desire of authorities to provide services directly instead of through voluntarygroups.49 In contrast, the Ministry of Health’s 1954–1955 Survey on the ChronicSick and Elderly focused mostly on hospital admission and residential accommo-dation.50 Again, it may have been that some of the schemes exaggerated thequality and quantity of services offered on the ground, but, by 1962, there wereat least some statutory services for the general classes offered in nearly everylocality in England and Wales.

There is some evidence that ambitious local authorities took on a great amountof initiative in the absence of direction from the Ministry of Health. The HomeCounties tended to have better developed schemes.51 Sheffield had employmentand rehabilitation centres and provided transportation. Leeds also provided freetransit and focused on fighting social isolation with opportunities for meals,

45. See Maurice Bruce, The Coming of the Welfare State, London: Batsford, 1961; G. KitsonClark, An Expanding Society: Britain, 1830–1900, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1967.Writing in 1989, Leadbetter said of Britain from 1945 to 1979, “it was as if society was ona great collective train journey into the future.” Charlie Leadbetter, “New Times Back to theFuture,” Marxism Today, May 1989.

46. N.A., MH 55/2636, National Assistance Act, 1948, Schemes under Section 29 for theWelfare of Handicapped Persons of the “General Classes” and of the Deaf and Dumb, 12June 1957.

47. Ministry of Health Annual Report 1957; Ministry of Health Annual Report 1958; Ministryof Health Annual Report 1959.

48. Ministry of Health Annual Report 1961.

49. Ibid.; Ministry of Health Annual Report 1960.

50. N.A., MH 55/1965.

51. N.A., MH 55/1035, Development Officer Report [Middlesex], November 1952; N.A., MH55/2242, Development Officer Report [Kent], November 1952.


hairdressing, and recreation.52 Durham County Council formed a local asso-ciation for the welfare of disabled people comprising interested citizens.53

Nottingham had an extensive set of services for disabled people,54 although thiswas not a new development as there was an unusually strong tradition of this from1908, as Borsay has discussed.55 Coventry’s two welfare officers arranged forhome care and worked with the local housing and city engineer’s departments tocreate adapted accommodation.

Many services were developed in cooperation with non-statutory groups. InCoventry, annual trips to the seaside and regular social and recreational oppor-tunities were offered through non-statutory groups like the Multiple SclerosisSociety.56 Essex developed an unusually strong set of services through financialsupport and cooperation with urban councils and the Red Cross.57 Smaller juris-dictions like the Isle of Ely and Isle of Anglesey, however, offered little ornothing with the Red Cross providing meager services for local disabled people.Overall, both statutory and voluntary services were slowly improving in theperiod and often in cooperation; they were not mutually exclusive or negativelyrelated, but often positively related and complementary. The classic welfare statedid not end the long tradition of voluntary efforts to improve the welfare ofdisabled people.

Extant archival sources and contemporary writings indicate that at least sixmajor voluntary groups at the national level were concerned directly with thewelfare of the general classes. The British Rheumatic Association wrote letters toThe Times expressing the need for a greater consideration of how the generalclasses could be employed.58 The National Cripples Reform League, later thePhysically Disabled People’s League (P.H.D.L.), formed in February 1949 as anassociation of “civilian disabled” with the goal of cash benefits for the general

52. N.A., MH 55/2242, Development Officer Report, February–March 1958.

53. N.A., MH 55/2242, Meeting of Development Committee [Durham County Council], 23January 1957.

54. N.A., LAB 20/672.

55. Borsay, “History, Power and Identity,” 98–120.

56. Brown, “Development of Local Authority Welfare,” 174–6.

57. Ibid., 197–200.

58. T. Williams [Chairman, British Rheumatic Association] and S. Nevillerolfe [Secretary-General], “Employment of the Disabled,” The Times, 19 June 1952; T. Williams, “Employ-ment of the Disabled: Need For a New Approach,” The Times, 27 October 1952.


classes based on severity of disablement and on a par with war pensions.59 TheP.H.D.L. corresponded with the Ministry of Health and the Common WealthParty and made contacts with disability groups in Canada, the United States,Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.60 The P.H.D.L. also released a 1952pamphlet with ambitious suggestions for the time, which included a nationaldisability allowance replacing National Assistance for all disabled people unableto work.61 The Spastics Society formed in 1963 as an amalgamation of the BritishCouncil for the Welfare of Spastics and the National Spastics Society to promotemedical research, treatment, education, employment training, and the overallwelfare for those 75,000 people with Cerebral Palsy.62 The Council for theRehabilitation of the Disabled helped arrange employment training and the PolioResearch Fund raised funds and organized discussion seminars.63 The SpasticsSociety identified the representation of, and services for, the general classes as a“golden vein” for voluntary activity within the classic welfare state.64

The Central Council for the Care of Cripples (C.C.C.C.), later the CentralCouncil for the Disabled, was probably the most active group. With the stateoccupying vast territories of the welfare landscape in the 1940s, the C.C.C.C. wasinitially unsure about how to proceed.65 Many voluntary bodies responsible forwelfare services for disabled people felt that their work would or should beassumed by the state, but the C.C.C.C. quickly found that local authoritiesrequired voluntary expertise in the absence of adequate personnel and funding.66

The C.C.C.C. surveyed developments of local authority schemes and submitted

59. N.A., MH 55/1033, Copy of Honourable Secretary’s Report to be delivered at First AnnualMeeting of the National Cripples Reform League, undated, probably February 1949.

60. N.A., MH 55/1033; Commonwealth Party Archive II: 33/32/7.

61. Frederick Messer, A Charter for the Physically Handicapped, London: Physically DisabledPeople’s League, 1952, 1–8.

62. “New Hope for Spastics in 1965,” Southern Evening Echo, 31 December 1964; N.A.,MH 154/90, Notes for Meetings with Officers of the Spastics Society, 11 May 1961; N.A.,MH 154/90, Notes of a Discussion with Representatives of the Spastics Society, 11 May1965.

63. J. B. Millard, “Voluntary Organisations,” Rheumatology and Physical Medicine 8, 1970,446–8.

64. N.A., MH 154/90, Note for the Permanent Secretary’s Meeting with Dr. Wheeter [SpasticsSociety], 11 January 1966.

65. Joan Anderson, A Record of Fifty Years of Service to the Disabled from 1919 to 1969 by theCentral Council for the Disabled, London: Central Council for the Disabled, 1969, 35.

66. N.A., MH 55/1035, Central Council for the Care of Cripples, Development Officer’s Reportfor the Year 1949, undated.


evidence to the Piercy Committee on the Rehabilitation and Resettlement ofDisabled People in relation to the N.H.S.67 The C.C.C.C. also served as a facili-tator between central government, local government, and voluntary bodies andencouraged local authorities to create or improve schemes.68 After a 1951 researchtrip to Copenhagen and the International Society for the Welfare of CripplesConference in Stockholm, and a brief survey of progress made in the year after therelease of Circular 32/51, the C.C.C.C. concluded that pressure from voluntarygroups forced local authorities to provide services in the absence of direction fromthe Ministry of Health.69 With the slow development of statutory services, vol-untary groups, and the C.C.C.C. in particular, had a vital role in the welfare of thegeneral classes and in creating awareness of their situation before the emergenceof D.I.G. in 1965.

***

Webster identified increased interest in the welfare of the general classes in themiddle and later 1950s as a result of independent enquiries and a “mountingpublic indignation over the plight of the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill andthe mentally handicapped.”70 Concerned that elderly and chronic sick people wereoccupying too many hospital beds, the Ministry of Health commissioned theBoucher Report in 1954 as a nationwide survey of community-based services forthese groups.71 The report was concerned mostly with Remploy and I.R.U., butwelfare services were also discussed. Expressed in Ministry of Health Circulars14/57 and 57/86, the report recommended greater local effort in providing resi-dential care, home visits, and coordination of home care.72 It emphasized the needfor more cooperation between local government and voluntary groups and theneed to move from residential to community care. Seen as an uncontroversial

67. N.A., MH 154/89, Report on Surveys in 19 Counties and 15 County Boroughs, May1964-January 1965 by the Central Council for the Disabled, undated, probably spring 1965.

68. N.A., MH 55/1035, Welfare Services for the Physically Handicapped, undated, probablyNovember 1952.

69. Ibid.; N.A., MH 55/1035, Development Officers Report, August–September 1951.

70. Younghusband, Social Work, 204; Charles Webster, The Health Services since the War,vol. 1, Problems of Health Care—The National Health Service before 1957, London:H.M.S.O., 1988, 119.

71. Ministry of Health, Report on Services Available to the Chronic Sick and Elderly, 1957.

72. Ministry of Health Circular 14/57, 7 October 1957; Ministry of Health Circular 57/86, 7October 1957.


point after the 1956 Guillebaud Report gave a favorable verdict on the financialviability of the N.H.S., the Boucher Report indicated that a greatly neededexpansion of local welfare services was impossible without significant fundingfrom central government: this was the first call for an Exchequer grant to aid localauthorities in creating services for the general classes.

Other major independent enquiries directed attention to the slow developmentof statutory welfare for the general classes. In response to local authorities’requests for loan sanctions as identified in the Phillips Report on Elderly People,the Exchequer increased loan sanctions for local authorities in 1956 and 1957.73

The Guillebaud Report recommended Exchequer funding specifically for localgovernment residential provision under Part 3 of the National Assistance Act.74

The Piercy Report also recommended an annually increasing Exchequer grant forservices for Section 29 groups and emphasised the need for community-basedwelfare services. The Ministry of Health committee formed by Vosper to studyPiercy’s recommendations was particularly forward-thinking in its recommenda-tions: an Exchequer grant for local services for all groups of disabled people, theneed for a unified Ministry of Health and Social Services, the need to consider thechanging needs of disabled people throughout the life cycle, and consideration forthe situation of the disabled housewife.75 These ideas for future provision were notoften mentioned before they became major objectives of the disability lobby from1965 onward.

The Piercy Report, along with the above-mentioned Ministry of Health com-mittee, formed to study its recommendations, questioned whether there wasenough progress on the ground to improve the welfare of the general classes. Inthe 13 December 1957 House of Commons debate on the report, Labour MPsmade several points about the general classes.76 Edward Evans, Labour MP forLowestoft, pressed for mandatory terms and Exchequer funding. Some MPs wereaware of similar schemes in the United States and West Germany, and offeredexamples of local government services, local statutory-voluntary collaborative

73. Report of the Committee on the Economic and Financial Problems of the Provision for OldAge, Cmd., 9333, 1954.

74. Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Cost of the National Health Services, Cmd.,9663, 1956.

75. N.A., MH 55/2636, Advisory Committee Report on the Health and Welfare of HandicappedPersons, First Meeting, 1 May 1957; Advisory Committee Report on the Health and Welfareof Handicapped Persons, Fourth Meeting, 4 December 1957.

76. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 579, 13 December 1957, 1619–1713.


projects, and hard cases in their constituencies. “I have here a whole lot of thesecases cited,” began Percy Collick, Labour MP for Birkenhead,

They are representative of a very much larger number. Mr. B is aged 55. Hehas been crippled with arthritis and rheumatism, particularly in his back, fora number of years. He lives with his wife in what my informant describes asa “dreadful cellar of a condemned house” for which he pays 6 s. a week. Hereceives £3 5 s. National Health Insurance for himself and his wife. The onlysupplementation they have received from the National Assistance Boardwas 35 s. for trousers and jacket. My informant says: “I am sure they wouldhave been very worthy people if circumstances could have been different.”That poor soul carried his cross long enough. Since I had this report thepoor man has passed away.77

MPs mentioned the better-developed services available to blind people.78

There were also criticisms of the lack of an Exchequer official on the PiercyCommittee.79 The Conservatives’ 1959 Election Manifesto mentioned morevehicles for severely disabled ex-servicemen, probably because of pressure fromthe Invalid Tricycles Association.80 Similar to Circular 32/51, the Piercy Reportand the other independent enquiries of the period served to highlight the situationof the general classes.

***

Notwithstanding criticisms of its flaws by later historians, the 1959 MentalHealth Act did at least serve to attract attention to local authority P.S.S. andcatalysed an increase in services for general classes. The act attempted to addressconcerns about the costs of the N.H.S. by moving mentally disabled people fromhospital beds into community care. In 1960, the Ministry of Health issuedCircular 15/60 to implement the act. As Sainsbury pointed out, mandatory localservices for mentally disabled people were extended logically to all disabledpeople, and the act fuelled the movement against institutionalisation in favour ofcommunity care.81 The act brought intensified pressure on local authorities to

77. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 579, 13 December 1957, 1672–1673.

78. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 579, 13 December 1957, 1621, 1632–1633, 1664.

79. Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 579, 13 December 1957, 1637, 1671, 1677.

80. C.P.A.: C.R.D. 2/27/19, Invalid Tricycles, 6 October 1959.

81. Sainsbury, “Disabled People,” 187.


offer home care and visits and was a major contributor toward reversing theaccommodation provisions of the 1948 National Assistance Act.82

Labour recognized chronic disability as a problem in their efforts to create anew contribution-based insurance scheme to replace National Insurance. Disabledpeople were mentioned in Tony Lynes’s condemning internal report on the stateof National Assistance.83 Lynes said that those disabled people on NationalAssistance who were not blind or suffering from Tuberculosis were probably lesswell off than they were before the war.84 Richard Titmuss said that the 1959 rateof National Assistance benefits compared unfavourably with the Poor Law dis-regards of 1904, 1932, and 1943.85 Along with the emerging definition of povertyas being relative to a mean standard of living, Labour came to the conclusion thatNational Assistance was thoroughly inadequate, even with the 1959 rate increase.Forecasts of increasing numbers of elderly people, and therefore disabled people,created a fear of a “demographic time bomb” and caused Labour’s study groupto consider the subsistence needs of those on National Assistance.86 Labour wasaware of many foreign disablement schemes including a full pension for thegeneral classes in New Zealand.87 Yet, there is no evidence that any new cashbenefits for the general classes were drawn up in their reconsiderations ofNational Insurance probably because of unwillingness to betray the contributoryprinciple.

Peter Townsend’s The Last Refuge (1962), a major force in Britain’s particularrediscovery of poverty, caused a panic before its publication.88 Townsend’sarticles of 17–18 May 1960 in The Times revealing problems with statutory

82. Borsay, Disability and Social Policy, 190.

83. Lynes worked with Professor Richard Titmuss at the London School of Economics and bothwere social policy advisors to Labour.

84. M.R.C.: MSS.154/3/SP/1, “A Review of National Insurance,” Labour Party Study Group onSecurity and Old Age, July 1960.

85. Richard Titmuss, The Irresponsible Society, London: Fabian Society, 1960, 8–9.

86. M.R.C.: MSS.154/3/SP/1, “Consequential Effects of Introducing a National SuperannuationScheme: Sickness and Employment Benefit,” Labour Party Research Department StudyGroup on Security and Old Age, February 1958.

87. M.R.C.: MSS.154/3/SP/1, “New Needs in Welfare,” Labour Party Research Department,March 1961.

88. Townsend was a Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and served as asocial policy advisor to Labour. Peter Townsend, The Last Refuge; a Survey of ResidentialInstitutions and Homes for the Aged in England and Wales, London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1962.


residential homes for elderly and disabled people alerted the Ministry of Health.89

Anticipating that the book would contain much criticism, the Ministry of Healthimmediately began to formulate Circular 11/61 in advance of its release.90 Theconcern manifested itself in letters to Titmuss asking for any indication of thebook’s release date.91 Circular 11/61 simply stated that local authorities could besubject to inspections and fines at the judgement of the Ministry and that thenumber of occupants should not exceed the limit in the registration certificate. TheCounty Councils Association, Association of Municipal Corporations, andseveral local authorities pushed for more detailed standards for facilities andservices in these homes, but the Ministry of Health already decided against thiswhen considering homes for mentally disabled people in 1959.92 There is noevidence to suggest that the Ministry of Health’s warning to local authorities wasever exercised or that regular or rigorous inspections were carried out, eventoward the end of the period.93

The Last Refuge exposed how the classic welfare settlement had failed needydisabled and elderly people:

At a time when we stand perhaps on the threshold of a new era in socialpolicy, we are in danger of being stigmatised by future generations asgrudging, indifferent and parsimonious to those among us who areunable, because of chronic illness, disability, poverty, loss of family orinadequacy of housing, to stand up to the rigours of a competitive society.We look back in horror at some of the cruelties perpetrated in the 1860s,just as our descendants, a hundred years hence, will look back withhorror at some of the cruelties we perpetrate today. Possibly the ultimatetest of the quality of a free, democratic and prosperous society is to befound in the standards of freedom, democracy and prosperity enjoyed byits weakest members.94

89. N.A., MH 57/632; Peter Townsend, “Too Many Petty Restrictions,” The Times, 17 May1960; Townsend, “Case for Greater Public Control,” The Times, 18 May 1960.

90. N.A., MH 154/416. Registration and Inspection of Disabled Persons’ and Old Persons’Homes, 3 January 1961.

91. N.A., MH 57/632.

92. N.A., MH 57/632; MH 57/633.

93. “By the 1960s inspection could amount to no more than a cup of tea with matron every fiveyears, or as much as a six monthly two hour examination of the premises.” Sainsbury,“Disabled People,” 187; Ministry of Health Circular 21/62, 13 September 1962.

94. Townsend, Last Refuge, 229.


Townsend showed how the Ministry of Health’s lack of direction had affectedlife in homes for Section 29 groups. There were only 850 welfare officers inEngland and Wales as local authorities had no statutory powers to develop ageneral welfare service. Relations between voluntary organizations and localauthority homes were often tense.95 Home visits were almost non-existent as theextent of most welfare officers’ work was to get people into residential care,although some of those admitted could live at home.96 While people in residencedid not live in horrific or unsanitary conditions, there was little done for theirsocial and psychological needs, and the atmosphere in the homes was sombre,gloomy, and austere.97 Perhaps most striking was that death had become a way oflife in the homes and that the failure to foster any sort of community or societyamongst the residents made the deaths of individuals simply go unnoticed.98 Forthe future of statutory welfare for disabled people, Townsend appealed for clarityin determining the roles of institutional care and cash benefits.99

***

In 1962, the C.R.D.’s study of Social Security in the European Common Marketmentioned the possibility of a national disability pension in its unfavourablecomparisons with continental welfare programs.100 In reaction to a 1963 partyconference resolution, the C.R.D. studied the possibility of the general classesbeing included in a National Insurance scheme that would be non-contributoryfor groups in severe need. The idea was eventually abandoned as it was felt itwould raise insurance contributions above an acceptable level.101 The C.R.D.’sstudy of a non-contributory benefit is significant, since it may have been the firsttime that government feared unfavourable comparisons being made betweenBritish statutory provision for disabled people and statutory provision inCommon Market countries, a tactic used often by D.I.G. and other disablementgroups in the middle and later 1960s and 1970s.

95. Ibid., 139.

96. Ibid., 232–4.

97. Ibid., 342–59, 431–2.

98. Ibid., 95–6.

99. Ibid., 257.

100. N.A., T 227/1482; C.P.A.: C.R.D. 1/30/20, Social Security and the European CommonMarket, 21 February 1962.

101. C.P.A.: C.R.D. 2/30/17, Conference Resolution, 30 September 1963.


In 1963 and 1964, the Ministries of Pensions and National Insurance andHealth began to consider new cash benefits for the general classes because ofmounting pressure about “gap groups” in the classic welfare state settlement andthose not provided for adequately by National Assistance and National Insurance.Previous pressure for new cash benefits tended to be anomalous and infrequent.102

An attendance allowance—a cash benefit paid to a relative unable to workbecause he or she cared for a disabled relative—for the general classes underNational Insurance was considered, but not pursued. It was felt that disabledex-servicemen deserved more than industrially injured disabled people or thegeneral classes did and that local authority welfare services could do more for thewelfare of “gap groups.” There was also the fear of betraying the contributoryprinciple. Further, it was felt that the option of an attendance allowance underNational Insurance would not cost any less than keeping disabled people inN.H.S. hospital beds.103

There is evidence that the Ministry of Health was in favor of an attendanceallowance for the general classes in the lead up to the 1964 general election.The group formed to consider pensions and cash benefits for P.S.S. groupsfound the idea favorable as a way to target genuine and widely identifiablesocial need. This was in line with some Conservative opinions at the time infavor of selective welfare for the neediest groups.104 To be seen as doing some-thing for disabled and elderly people under the attendant care of familymembers in an election year was an additional incentive.105 The combination ofpublic sympathy, pressure, and desire to selectively address outstanding needdid not, however, cause the Douglas-Home government to promise an atten-dance allowance for the general classes in their 1964 Election Manifesto. Thelack of statistics on the potential number of applicants, personnel and financialcosts, and administrative complications were the probable causes. It is notablethat the scheme considered for the general classes had the same qualifying cri-teria as that for disabled ex-servicemen and industrially injured disabledpeople.106

102. See, for example, N.A., MH 55/1033, National Cripples Reform League to Attlee, 14March 1950; N.A., BN 103/19, Liverpool and District Disablement Advisory Committee toMinistry of Labour and National Service, 30 August 1959.

103. N.A., BN 103/19.

104. N.A., BN 72/177, Minutes of Sixth Meeting of Steering Committee, 10 April 1964.

105. N.A., BN 72/177, R. S. Swift to Minister of Health, 6 July 1964.

106. N.A., BN 72/177, Minutes of Sixth Meeting of Steering Committee, 10 April 1964.


For the first time, in 1964, pressure had raised the profile of the general classesto a sufficient level to be considered in an election year. So too had the compara-tively poor level of cash benefits for the general classes under National Assistancein comparison to those for disabled ex-servicemen and industrially injureddisabled people been recognized and considered for remedy. The NationalInsurance/National Assistance divide was questioned, as was strict adherence tothe contributory principle in the consideration of a small non-contributory benefitin the form of an allowance for attendant relatives.

***

The welfare of general classes did not receive much particular attention in theclassic welfare-state settlement of the 1940s. It was originally felt that informalwelfare and non-statutory services, in addition to statutory employment andrehabilitation programmes, could provide for the majority of their welfare. Thefirst part of this article argued that there was some development in local statutorywelfare services and that this accelerated in the middle and later 1950s. That said,this article has analyzed extant archival evidence and concluded that the specu-lations of Sainsbury, Lowe and Bridgen, and Borsay are correct: overall, the 1948to 1964 period was one of slow progress.

The second part of the article argued that the major changes in the period camein the perception and awareness of the welfare of the general classes. The inde-pendent enquiries of the middle 1950s raised the overall profile of the generalclasses and this manifested itself in the House of Commons and the media. Therewere some statutory welfare services in almost every locality in England andWales by 1962 and The Last Refuge, as a part of the rediscovery of poverty in theearly 1960s, further raised public and government awareness of elderly anddisabled people. The desirability of cash benefits for disabled people also began toemerge in the early 1960s. The Ministries of Pensions and National Insurance andHealth addressed the idea of an attendance allowance for those out of work forextended periods because he or she cared for a disabled relative. The Douglas-Home government also considered an attendance allowance in response to pres-sure in an election year.

This article has argued that the general classes were not discovered overnightat some indeterminate point in the middle 1960s. From the beginning of the classicwelfare state, they were, at the least, an identifiable group within social ministries,local government, and the Conservative and Labour Parties. While greaterchanges in perception or the potential for significant policy development did not


occur until the middle 1960s, 1948 to 1964 was an important transition periodfrom the Poor Law, workhouse and centuries-old concepts of liable relatives tothe state engaging with this increasingly discernible needy group. There is muchevidence in this period of activities, attitudes, and ideas, that scholars haveassumed did not exist until the middle 1960s: (1) concerned parties had someawareness of international schemes and there were calls for the levelling up ofstatutory provision for the general classes with other P.S.S. groups; (2) a non-contributory disability allowance was considered briefly by the Douglas-Homegovernment before cash benefits and the questioning of the contributory principlebecame major issues in the middle and later 1960s; (3) the belief that the welfareof the general classes would come under the increasing responsibility of the stateexisted and grew stronger throughout the period. It was the greater intensification,not the invention, of these factors that helped lead to the greater movement forchange in the excitement of the middle and later 1960s.
