This article examines in detail some recent data on the living standards of elderly people. It is argued that poverty is related to low resources and restricted access to resources and therefore the article includes summarized information about a wide range of benefits and services. Questions are raised concerning the various social policies and processes which have contributed to the creation of poverty and dependency in old age. The growing importance of retirement is singled out for attention as one significant factor contributing to the depressed social status of the elderly, and as part of the general tendency in British society to devalue the worth of elderly people. It is this social relationship between age and the labour market which deserves attention from policy-makers, who have tended to concentrate on the consequences rather than the causes of dependency.

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The Social Creation of Poverty and Dependency in Old Age

The 2010 Coalition has set itself the challenge of combining an unprecedentedly rapid and profound retrenchment with a fundamental restructuring of the public sector, both to be accomplished within five years. The immediate justification is a presumed need to reduce national indebtedness. The longer-term goal is to shrink the state, free up the market and set British political economy on a new course.

The programme has encountered a number of set-backs and some elements appear more likely to be realized than others. This article considers the objectives of the Coalition programme and the likely outcomes, using evidence from a number of sources including comparisons with the experience of retrenchment elsewhere and analysis of previous rounds of public spending cut-backs.

Root and Branch Restructuring to Achieve Major Cuts: The Social Policy Programme of the 2010 UK Coalition Government

Identifying the employment effect of invoking and changing the minimum wage: a spatial analysis of the UK

The 1964-70 Wilson government has been the subject of intense criticism, yet limited academic study. Attention has focused primarily on its failure to achieve any breakthrough in the application of 'white heat' technology. The effect has been that many important aspects of the government's industrial policies have been ignored. In particular, its commitment to public ownership has received little consideration, despite appearing anomalous compared with the nationalisations of the preceding (and succeeding) Labour governments. Between 1964 and 1970, only iron and steel was brought into public ownership, and that was primarily 'unfinished business' from 1945-51.This thesis determines why the 1964-70 government was so reluctant to use public ownership and, specifically, nationalisation. Firstly, the relationship between public ownership and the Labour party in 1964 is examined. The Attlee government’s experiences with nationalisation and the revision of the party's programme during the 1950s are considered, along with the contribution which Wilson made to that revision. The thesis contends that, by 1964, the party's commitment to public ownership was genuinely different from that in 1945. However, it further asserts that the economic analysis on which it was based had already become outdated by 1964, and encumbered the government with an inappropriate ideological framework. Secondly, the recent release of official papers has made possible a detailed consideration of the 1964-70 government's performance. They reveal that the government pursued a more active public ownership policy than is normally considered by historians. In shipbuilding and aerospace partial nationalisations were undertaken, while more generally interventionist frameworks were established. This thesis concludes that such policies were fatally undermined by the over-commitment of Wilson to sterling parity. Coupled with the shortcomings of the party's ideological framework, this explains both why the 1964-70 government's policies appear anomalous, and why the government continues to be severely criticised.

The Labour Party and nationalisation from Attlee to Wilson, 1945-1968 : beyond the commanding heights

Considers why different explanations of the same event can be produced and discusses the characteristics of a good explanation. It identifies and analyses a wide range of different published explanations of a seminal public administration policy‐change. It separates those accounts of that event into families of explanations and describes their common underlying presuppositions. These shared presuppositions are used to construct four models of public policy‐making: sovereign policy‐makers; policy‐makers as relays; policy‐making as the personal; and the discursive construction of policy. Each explanation (and its conceptual model) is challenged by historically grounded counter‐evidence. Based on this analysis the paper suggest ways in which analysis of public management changes might be more fruitfully orientated.

Structure or agency? Discourse or meta‐narrative? Explaining the emergence of the financial management initiative

Britain's Economic Problem.

In the blood of the socialist, Anthony Crosland argued, 'there should always run a trace of the anarchist and the libertarian, and not too much of the prig and the prude.' His classic manifesto, The Future of Socialism, first appeared when its author was thirty-eight years old. Asa Briggs described it in the Observer as 'a fascinating an original survey of contemporary British society which will appeal to a far wider circle of readers than confirmed Socialist.' More than twenty years on, the brilliance, urgency, humanity and eloquence of Crosland's message are not diminished: Croslandism, as it now is know, remains the aim of democratic socialists in many countries besides Britain. Crosland's philosophy stemmed from his feelings for man as an individual - passionate feelings for equality matched by respect for personal liberty. He combined the intellectual and the politician in a way that was perhaps unique in this century. Irreverence and humour add to the penetration and width of his argument. 'Total abstinence and a good filing-system are not now the right sign-posts to the socialist Utopia,' Crosland once said; 'or at least, if they are, some of us will fall by the wayside.' Shortly after Crosland died, Michael Young wrote in Encounter: 'His voice carried conviction because it was the voice of someone thinking out his position for himself.' It is a measure of the book that John Strachey's directive in the New Statesman is as true and relevant today as ever it was. 'No-one must in future take part in the controversy on Socialism without having read it.'

C. A. R. Crosland

Papers

Britain's Economic Problem.

The Future of Socialism.