A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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As Hennessy points out, the new government encouraged means-testing where possible, starting a persistent Conservative post-war trend. This necessitates a comprehensive dash across history, from the debates over social reform in the aftermath of the war, to the wrangling over Britain’s relationship with Europe, the impact of Thatcherism, all the way through Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron to the Brexit wars of the late 2010s – and that’s just part one. Labour’s measure opened the way for future Conservative governments to extend means-testing and erode Beveridgean universalism.

A duty of care : Britain before and after Corona A duty of care : Britain before and after Corona

Peter Hennessy looks back to Sir William Beveridge's classic wartime report and identification of the 'five giants' society had to slay - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - which laid the foundations for the modern welfare state. I think we will” while maintaining community spirit: “We need a decade of real, shared accomplishment that can only come with a high level of consensus” (p. Hennessy does describe how improvements to education resulted from the wartime work of the Conservative Minister, R. In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy divides post-war British history into BC (before covid) and AC (after covid).Hennessy rightly points out that the pandemic increased public awareness of serious social problems, in particular the inadequacy of social care for older and disabled people and the resulting stress upon them and their families, and increasing poverty, homelessness and use of food banks. World War 2 lasted for more than 5years, longer (so far) than the pandemic and was far more disruptive, nationally and internationally. The historian, broadcaster and cross-bench peer is renowned for his books on postwar Britain, so familiar with his subject matter that he treats his “characters” – Churchill, Bevin, Wilson – as though he is writing about old friends. It turns out that what we need is the same again and that the right response to the effects of the pandemic is a ‘new consensus’ and a ‘new Beveridge’. The National Health Service grew out of numerous pre-war and wartime proposals, then was constructed by Aneurin Bevan, who was also responsible for building improved council houses.

A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy | Waterstones A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy | Waterstones

Beveridge was deeply disappointed by Labour’s response to his proposals and because the government did not consult him as he hoped, as Jose Harris points out in her excellent biography of Beveridge which, strangely, Hennessy does not reference.

Patricia Thane, FBA, is Visiting Professor in History, Birkbeck College, University of London and the author of several books including Divided Kingdom: A History of Britain 1900 to the present (2018). In A Duty of Care, Peter Hennessy draws a link between the history of the postwar welfare state and the post-pandemic case for a new settlement .

A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy — building a better post

Since its foundation in 1900, Labour had believed that full employment at decent pay was the best means to maximize “welfare”, with benefits for those unable to work due to age, disability, sickness or other difficulties. His indifference to things that happen outside Britain (and especially in non-English-speaking countries) is so marked that he makes Nigel Farage look like Isaiah Berlin.He states banal opinions with a confidence that will give anyone who holds such opinions the impression that they must be very clever. Covering so much ground in a mere hundred pages results in a first half that, while commendably thorough, is almost impenetrably dense. Pretty much the only name not dropped by Hennessy is that of his former student Simon Case, who is, at the time of writing, head of the British civil service. He lays out the 'road to 2045' with 'a new Beveridge' to build a consensus for post-covid Britain with the ambition and on the scale that was achieved by the first.