STATE PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEED
Series Three: Papers from the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex

Part 1: Topic Collections on Social Welfare and the Beveridge Report, 1939-1949

Series One of State Provision for Social Need made available the papers of the Beveridge Committee from official sources and so offered a rather top-down approach to issues of social welfare in post-war Britain. It also offered very valuable comparative material concerning welfare schemes in Europe and America and records of consultations with leading organisations.

Series Two supplied a more personal perspective, comprising Sir William Beveridge’s own papers on Welfare topics from the Health Service and Old Age, to Unemployment and Social Insurance.

This third series of State Provision for Social Need provides gives much more of a bottom-up perspective, comprising hundreds of detailed responses from ordinary folk concerning Welfare topics as gathered by the Mass-Observation organisation.

There are over 80 Topic Collections in the Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex covering issues as diverse as Adult & Higher Education; Air Raids; Anti-Semitism; Beveridge Report Surveys; Capital Punishment; Drinking Habits; Happiness; Housing; Leisure; Personal Appearance; Reconstruction; Sexual Behaviour; Squatting; Voting Attitudes and Work. These are surveys and investigations carried out by Mass-Observation mainly between 1937 and 1949, with some later files for the 1960s and 1970s.

Together with the Worktown Collection (published by Adam Matthew Publications as Parts 2 & 3 of the Mass-Observation Archive) these represent the raw matrerial gathered by observers. Some of this was worked up into a polished form in the printed publications (published by Adam Matthew Publications as Part 1 of the Mass-Observation Archive). Brief details also appeared in the File Reports, some of which have been published in microfiche. But this is the first time that Topic Collections have been published in their entirety, giving scholars an opportunity to re-examine and re-interpret the data.

In this part we have brought together eight Topic Collections which have a strong bearing on Social Welfare and the Beveridge Report. These are: Reconstruction, Family Planning, Health, Day Nurseries, Adult and Higher Education, Post War Hopes, Public Administration and Social Services in Wartime and the Beveridge Report Surveys. Some consist of a single box. Others run to up to six boxes. All comprise individually lettered files within the boxes, all of which have been filmed in their entirety.

Their aim is set out in one of the early Reconstruction files (TC2/2/D):
"The work we are at present doing on reconstruction originates in numerous requests we have received for information on public attitudes towards Post War reconstruction.... The central aim of what we are doing is to find out what people really feel about events after the war, what their private hopes and fears are about their homes, their jobs, the political mechanism designed to make their wants known, as distinct from what planners, politicians and press-men would like them to feel."

The material provides illuminating feedback from the general public on all manner of questions posed to them by the investigators. The proposals for the Beveridge Report evoked the following response dated 2 December 1942, in Streatham from a male skilled worker of 50; "I have read it and think it champion and will take a load off the minds of many people. The most important proposals - well they are all very important but suppose the Retirement Pension and Unemployment increase are perhaps the greatest benefit. It should be passed as quickly as possible. I do not see how anybody can oppose it except perhaps the Insurance Companies but they don’t matter they have feathered their nest long enough".

There was also a demand for equality in education:

"I reckon every school should come under the state, and every child should have the same sort of education. I don’t think it’s fair one should get more than another; because after all they can’t help it, coming into the world. I’ve a daughter myself, they gave her the option of going into an art school - she was rather clever - but circumstance made it so I couldn’t do it - and I think, why can’t she have the same chance as another child, being so clever; but we couldn’t get help or anything, so I had to turn it down."

The material to be found in The Topic Collections includes not only accounts of interviews but also descriptions of people, places and events, reports with drafts and plans for proposed books, project plans, instructions to investigators, questionnaire replies, internal memoranda, correspondence, printed booklets, photographs, graphs and diagrams, maps, posters, tickets, bills, advertisements and press cuttings. It is indispensable to the researcher who wishes to study the unfiltered views of the "man in the street" with regard to all kinds of contemporary issues and gives an insight into public feeling captured through a qualitative method of approach.

This material will be invaluable to anyone interested in social welfare. The Topic Collections offer a unique grass roots perspective of these issues, offering the genuine views of the public, rather than the wishes of the planners and politicians. The files will be used by historians trying to understand the Labour landslide of 1945, by sociologists and social historians investigating cultural issues, and by those studying Family Planning, Post War Reconstruction and State Provision for Social Need.

NB This material was originally published by Adam Matthew Publications as Part 4 of the Mass-Observation Archive.