Heath Anthony F. - Social Progress in Britain

Preface

This book grew out of a set of briefing papers, published online by the Centre for Social Investigation of Nuffield College (http://csi.nuff.ox.ac.uk/), which trace social change in Britain over the decades since Sir William Beveridge published his celebrated 1942 report on Social Insurance and Allied Services. The Centre for Social Investigation was established by Nuffield College with the aims of addressing contemporary social issues of public interest and providing rigorous, non-partisan reports to policy-makers and the general public. The Centres aims are closely aligned with the College charter which encourages the study by co-operation between academic and non-academic persons of social (including economic and political) problems. CSIs work builds on a long tradition of research at Nuffield exploring social change, of which the most famous examples are perhaps David Butler and Donald Stokes Political Change in Britain, John Goldthorpes Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain, and Chelly Halseys Twentieth-Century British Social Trends.

Nuffield College also has a long tradition of cooperation between academic and non-academic persons. Indeed, William Beveridge himself was associated with Nuffield College during the war and in his preface to his 1944 book Full Employment in a Free Society he mentioned how he had benefited from the admirable series of conferences in connection with the College, organized originally by Mr G.D.H. Cole. Nowadays, G. D. H. Cole is not a well-known figure, but he played a key role in Oxford and more particularly in Nuffield College social science. He initiated the Social Reconstruction Survey, which collected demographic, economic, and social data for evidence-based social reform. It was the forerunner of many notable national surveys conducted by members of the college, on which I have drawn liberally in this book.

Social Progress in Britain thus stands in a Nuffield College tradition of research which extends back to William Beveridge and G. D. H. Cole, and which is greatly indebted to the many practitioners of that tradition such as David Butler, John Goldthorpe, and Chelly Halsey, who all developed the tradition during the intervening years. In some ways, though, Social Progress in Britain is not a typical representative of the Nuffield tradition since, in writing it, I have entirely avoided sophisticated statistical analyses and have instead simply tried to piece together the (sometimes confusing and contradictory) evidence about what has happened in the fight against the five giant evils that Beveridge identified in 1942. More sophisticated analysis should certainly be undertaken in order to test rigorously the many conjectures which I advance about the underlying causes of social progress in Britain, or its lack. However, I decided to follow the advice which I always give my doctoral studentsa completed thesis is always better than the perfect but incomplete thesis.

While I am named as the author of Social Progress in Britain, it is important to emphasize that it has been a collective effort involving all the members of CSIBeth Garratt, James Laurence, Lindsay Richards, Valentina di Stasio, Noah Carl, and Wouter Zwysenas well as many academic and non-academic members of the college community. CSI has also been very fortunate in having a supportive advisory boardAndrew Dilnot, Iqbal Wahhab, Stephen Aldridge, Paul Cleal, Richard Dick, Stephanie Flanders, Michael Kell, Bruno Paulson, Gemma Rosenblatt, Ray Shostak, and Stephen Timmswho have been generous with their time and advice.

I would also like to thank Bess Bukodi, Felix Busch, Jonathan Cribb, Duncan Gallie, Michael Goldacre, John Goldthorpe, Angus Hawkins, Bernie Hayes, John Jerrim, Ridhi Kashyap, Alice Lazzati, Yaojun Li, Colin Mills, Nan Dirk de Graaf, Marii Paskov, Max Roser, Reannan Rottier, Ricky Taylor, Nathan Thomas, Becky Tunstall, and Dingeman Wiertz for their practical help and advice as well as the team at Oxford University PressDominic Byatt, Elakkia Bharathi, Sarah Parker, Dawn Preston, and Olivia Wellsfor their support and forbearance with my various whims. Needless to say, neither the college, the advisory board, the members of CSI, nor any of these friends or colleagues are responsible for the final content of the book. I have freely used my authors prerogative to ignore advice and therefore take full responsibility for the interpretations of the data and for all errors and omissions.

Anthony F. Heath

Nuffield College

Contents