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Clear Blue Water? The
Conservative Party and the Welfare State since 1940
Robert
M. Page
Bristol: Policy Press, 2015 Hardback. x+201 p. ISBN 978-1847429865.
£65.25
Reviewed by Emma Bell Université de
Savoie Mont-Blanc
In this scholarly work,
Robert Page sets out to provide a thorough account of the Conservative Party’s
approach to the welfare state since 1940, in contradistinction to the multiple
accounts which concentrate primarily on the role of consensus politics in shaping
social policy throughout the period. Page seeks to contextualise the Conservative
approach in light of the party mindset and of other policies, notably economic
and industrial policy. His aim is to provide a neutral and dispassionate
account of Conservative social policy through a chronological account of
different policy initiatives and an analysis of the key actors involved, from
individual ministers to think tanks and policy groups. In doing so, he helps to
foster a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and succeeds in dispelling
some widely-held myths about Conservative policy in this area, such as the idea
that changes to the welfare state under the Thatcher governments were minor in
scale. Although Page adopts a
chronological policy account, he distinguishes four different Conservative
approaches to the welfare state throughout the post-war period: a ‘One Nation’
approach, identified with Churchill, Eden and Macmillan; a ‘modern technocratic
approach’ under Heath; a ‘neoliberal Conservative’ approach during the Thatcher
years; and a ‘progressive neo-liberal Conservative approach’ since 1997 but
most particularly under the leadership of David Cameron from 2005. Regardless
of these distinctions, as Page states himself, there are common threads running
across the different periods. One theme that emerges particularly clearly is
that of pragmatism, notably the need to tailor social policy to meet the needs
of electoral strategy: Page describes how the Conservatives were keen to
assuage public fears that they would fail to implement extensive social reform
along the lines of the Beveridge Report after the war, and how radicalism was
tempered during the Thatcher years by concerns about public attachment to the
key institutions of the welfare state, not least the NHS. Pragmatism was also
fostered by the enduring need to make cost savings, whether in the 1960s or in
the present day. Whilst ideology remained important, notably the Conservative
belief in individualism, it seems that it was frequently cast aside in the
interests of pragmatism. Nonetheless, ideology did
play a role, often leading to conflict between Conservatives hailing from
different ideological traditions, irrespective of what the prevailing approach
to welfare policy was at the time. Whilst internal party conflict over policy
direction was perhaps most salient in Thatcher’s first term, with the
distinction between the ‘wets’ and the ‘dries’, Page notes that such conflict
was evident throughout the period. In the 1940s, for example, there were
tensions between ‘progressives’ such as Butler, Hogg and Macmillan, who
accepted the need for an enlarged role for the State, and traditionalists such
as party chairman Ralph Assheton, who expressed great concern about such a
doctrinal turn. Whilst the typology adopted
by Page is useful in terms of helping the reader get to grips with the broad
thrust of policy at different periods, the labels used would have benefited
from more detailed definition. In particular, the term ‘neoliberal Conservatism’
is never fully defined. Whilst Page associates it with a belief in home
ownership, individualism and efficiency, he does not make it clear what really
distinguishes it from earlier periods of Conservatism. Indeed, a belief in home
ownership and the creation of a ‘property-owning democracy’ can be traced back
to Eden and Heath, as the author himself points out. What exactly does Page
mean by ‘neoliberalism’? How exactly does it differ from other strands of Conservative
thought? Can it be understood primarily as an approach to economic policy or
does it also have a cultural dimension? What is ‘Conservative’ neoliberalism as
opposed to the neoliberalism of ‘New Labour’? Indeed, whilst it is
understandable that detailed references are not made to Labour’s welfare state
policy, this not being the key focus of the book, it is hard for the author to
highlight where the ‘clear blue water’ really lies between Britain’s mainstream
parties in the absence of more detailed analysis of Opposition policy. Furthermore, the distinction
between ‘neoliberal Conservatism’ and ‘progressive neoliberal Conservatism’ is
somewhat problematic as it tends to overemphasise the concrete differences
between these two approaches. Whilst differences undoubtedly exist – notably contemporary
Conservatives’ acceptance of a relative definition of poverty and their
willingness to accord more rights to homosexuals – it might be argued that the
similarities are just as salient. Rhetorically, there may have been a slight
change in discourse as more ‘compassionate’ approaches were favoured. Yet, just
as under Thatcher, welfare reforms were framed by the discourse of
responsibility and liberation from the shackles of state dependency. The
language of workers versus ‘shirkers’ first employed in the 1970 Conservative
election manifesto was redeployed. The Social Justice Policy Group’s discourse
concerning the ‘cycle of disadvantage’ was redolent of Keith Joseph’s work on
the ‘cycle of poverty’. The causes of poverty were certainly considered to be similar:
family breakdown and economic dependency in particular. The structural causes
of poverty were to be downplayed at all costs and welfare claimants continued
to be stigmatised. In practice, it is hard to see what was genuinely
‘progressive’ about welfare policy under Cameron whereby all welfare claimants,
with the exception of pensioners, and users of public health and education
services have been subject to austerity measures. Perhaps the one genuinely
distinctive feature of Conservative policy in this recent period has been the
massive extension in the role of the private sector in the delivery of welfare,
yet this is a reform that gets only the most cursory of mentions. In the final
analysis, Page’s dispassionate approach proves to be something of a hindrance.
In failing to answer the question he poses at the end of the book with regard
to ‘how far the progressive neo-liberal Conservatives differ from their older
sibling’, he is left unable to justify his own typology.
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