Domestic Soldiers (19 page)

In this ‘revolutionary moment’, Beveridge didn’t want simply to tweak the already existing schemes that had proven wholly inadequate before the war. Sir William wanted to dismantle the demoralizing public assistance of the past; he believed it was a system that encouraged idleness and discouraged thrift in order to be paid benefit or that tore families and neighbourhoods apart by the hated means test.

Under the ‘dole’ and the means test, officials pried into the lives of the poor who needed government assistance. They visited homes, assessed the worth of property they found there (such as furniture, crockery and ornaments) and the worth of the resident workers to decide whether or not the family would receive benefit, and if so, the level of that assistance. The means test was a nasty and hurtful cost-saving measure that made sure individuals were absolutely destitute before benefits were paid. Many were too ashamed to take the assistance, as Alice Bridges remembered. Though her father was out of work much of the time when she was growing up, he refused to accept government money: ‘His pride wouldn’t let him,’ she explained. The result was a deep poverty, softened only by her mother’s determination to keep her children clothed and fed as best she could. In Irene Grant’s eyes, the elimination of such a degrading system could only make people’s lives better.

Sir William’s plan would revolutionize, rationalize and humanize the system in order to slay what he called the five ‘giants’ that threatened to destroy Britons’ happiness, health and freedom in the post-war world: the giants of want, disease, squalor, idleness and ignorance.
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Furthermore, it would ensure the right of all citizens to an adequate income while also encouraging privacy, independence and thrift. In other words, individuals could be assured a basic minimum of security upon which they could build a better life.

As some, such as Natalie Tanner and the Mitchells, feared, many in the government saw the plan as too radical, and official resistance was unmistakable. Although hopeful for the change, many were also cynical about the government’s commitment to the plan.
The legacy of the Great War was certainly no source of comfort; few who remembered that war’s broken promises were willing to be burned once again by high ideals and impotent action. Irene Grant praised Sir William for his ‘grand words’ and was drawn by his ideas to ‘Work as u [sic] never worked before for
your
land, your industries
, your good time to come,
your mater
ial security
, for common ownership is here; no more dole – etc etc.’ Still, ‘
Words mean nothing
if we see nothing done,’ she told M-O.

Despite the scepticism engendered by past betrayals of the popular faith, the Beveridge Plan stirred up a great deal of hope when it was released. Irene Grant, ageing and hindered by declining health, was especially hopeful that old age pensioners’ benefit would increase in order to allow some modicum of independence in old age. Nella Last was captivated by Beveridge’s BBC speech on 2 December – not since she first heard a voice over the radio, she confessed to M-O, was she so interested in what anyone had to say. Listening to the broadcast, she began to feel ‘more hopeful about the “brave new world” now, and… feel a
real
effort will be made to grasp the different angles of the many problems’. What intrigued her the most, however, was the fact that Beveridge had considered the welfare and position of women.

Sir William was careful to include housewives in his plan, as he believed that these women were doing work of national importance during the war and would continue to do so in peacetime. Furthermore, since his system was to be comprehensive and all-inclusive, provisions had to be made to include individuals who had ‘different ways of life’, such as those who did contract work, those unable to work due to age or
infirmity, or housewives who rendered ‘vital unpaid services’. Benefits for housewives included maternity grants, retirement pensions and provisions in the case of widowhood or ‘marital separation’.
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A woman would also receive benefits if her husband was disabled or unemployed and she herself were not gainfully employed. On the other hand, married women who were gainfully employed received lower unemployment and disability benefits, based on Beveridge’s assumption that their husbands supported them. Still, women’s magazines buzzed with excitement at the explicit provisions given them as mothers and housewives in the plan.

Beveridge ‘recognizes women’,
Woman’s Own
magazine enthused, ‘with their contribution to the national well-being as equals and partners of men’, and the magazine pointed out that the plan formally acknowledged women’s place as citizens.
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Good Housekeeping
called the report a ‘Charter for Women’ and noted enthusiastically how,

The dignity of housewifery aside, Nella was thankful that someone had finally recognized the financial precariousness of married women’s position and had proposed something to rectify it.

If her husband Will died, under the existing widow’s pension scheme, Nella reckoned she would be entitled to only 10 shillings a week (about £28 a year – Seebohm
Rowntree’s studies of poverty in York in 1936 postulated that a woman required nearly 23 shillings a week on which to live on her own). She had little savings of her own and Will didn’t believe in insurance. She had managed to convince him to take out a meagre £200 policy, but that would soon expire. If her sons did not take her in, she would become destitute. But with Beveridge, she would receive 40 shillings a week (roughly £112 per year), plus free medical services.

Perhaps the best-received aspect of the plan was the provision of universal national health care. Many women were not covered under the existing insurance schemes before the war. Nella, for example, did not have health insurance. When she fell ill and required an operation in the 1930s, she recalled the ‘bitter struggle’ to survive due to the costs. Health insurance was available for contributing workers before the war through the National Health Insurance scheme, inaugurated in 1911, but this did not cover married women, children or the long-term unemployed.

Friendly societies helped fill in the gaps through contributions to help their members pay for medical care, while insurance companies also offered health care options. In some districts, community members and employers contributed to hospitals in order to gain access to care. Edie Rutherford’s Sheffield and Alice Bridges’ Birmingham had strong contributory schemes of this nature, which allowed people both community governance of and access to multiple hospitals in the area. Although it is unclear whether she contributed to them, it nonetheless seems likely that Irene Grant and her family may have received care at one of the thriving schemes providing Tynesiders access to a local hospital, such as Newcastle’s Royal Victoria or Sunderland’s
Royal Infirmary. Finally, voluntary and local authorities could also help poor and deserving individuals gain health care. The system was cobbled together, poorly coordinated and based on the ability to pay for services. Beveridge hoped to change all of this through his comprehensive National Health Service.

Irene Grant thought such a service would be a huge improvement on the current system. People waited ‘hours and hours in hospital, even when they only need a ¼ hour’s attention – and they sit on horrid hard cold seats’. Furthermore, she complained, paying patients received the lion’s share of doctors’ attention, leaving others in the lurch. Nonetheless, despite a great deal of popular support, in the months following the publication of the Beveridge Report it seemed highly unlikely that any of the recommendations would ever come to fruition. The Liberal and Labour parties both came out in favour of the plan, but the government was extremely reluctant to support it, and the BBC placed a moratorium on discussion of the plan until Parliament met in February 1943.

By February, many felt that the government was purposely sidelining the issue. When Parliament finally opened the debate on 16 February, the Cabinet was given specific instructions by Churchill – gravely ill but simultaneously coping with Gandhi’s hunger-strike – to make it clear that the decision to implement Beveridge’s proposals would not occur until after a new government was elected when the war ended. The ministers charged to relay this message tactlessly revealed their true feelings about the report when they stood up in the House. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kingsley Wood, argued the financial shortcomings of the plan with such relish that the
depth of government resistance towards reform was patently clear.

Peter Mitchell was furious at the government’s resistance to the report, but Helen could barely muster concern. Since Beveridge went public in December, she had been coping with the Bs, tenants that Peter had arranged to occupy half of their house since September. Although it meant some extra work – Helen had to whitewash the walls since the place looked like a ‘slum dwelling’ – she initially enjoyed the company. Helen and Mrs B worked out a schedule for the use of the kitchen and thus avoided ‘stepping on each others’ toes’. Helen was happy that the couple seemed to be ‘considerate people’ who were quiet and respectful of her space. By early November, she reported, ‘They continue to be pleasant tenants, and I prefer them here than to be alone.’

Soon, however, she had tired of the Bs. On 16 November, Helen felt a ‘nervous wreck’ because the Bs’ daughter, Anne, flitted around the house all day, raising a racket. The schoolchildren behind her home screamed and carried on for most of the day, and it didn’t help that Helen’s housekeeper, Cripps, added to the chaos by ‘violently’ cleaning the house from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. After Cripps finally made her exit for the day, Helen took a sleeping pill and flopped into bed early.

The general din of the tenants and other annoyances continued to ratchet up through the holiday season until Anne began nightly screaming fits in mid-December. Anne was terrified by the face of a ‘nasty man’ she claimed to see floating about the nursery. ‘Suppose ghosts are inevitable in these foul Elizabethan houses,’ Mitchell huffed. ‘Anyway, life is going to be impossible with the child; shall become neurotic from constant noise.’

Lack of sleep plagued Helen until finally, she fell ill with bronchitis. She went to hospital, where the doctor informed her that in addition to the poor state of her lungs, her heart was not strong. The doctor told her she ‘mustn’t do any hard work, quiet and rest indicated and no worries!’ She stifled a sarcastic chuckle, thinking ‘Doctors are innocent folk!’ Avoiding chores and finding peace was a laugh, but Helen did take to her bed for several weeks in an effort to rebuild her strength. The pity of it, she thought, was that the rest only ensured that she would resume her daily round, which amounted to cooking breakfast for her family (when home) and tenants, washing up, doing housework and starting all over for lunch and dinner. ‘Ridiculous life’, she grumbled.

Life became a little more bearable for Helen in early March when the Bs finally departed. Even her son, William, was in a good mood when he came home at the end of the month because he’d received a commission and was now an officer. Nonetheless, as she read about the debates raging in Parliament over the Beveridge Report and listened to the war news, Helen couldn’t help wonder whether the government was now committed to prolonging the war in order to avoid implementing the now wildly popular report.

In the weeks surrounding the debate, several pro-Beveridge parties, demanding its immediate implementation, won stunning by-election victories against the government in the spring of 1943. Mainstream parliamentary parties, such as Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberals, did not contest seats during the war; other parties, however, did not recognize this political ‘truce’. One of those parties was Common Wealth, formed when a non-political
pressure group called the 1941 Committee, headed by J.B. Priestley, merged with Sir Richard Acland’s Forward March Movement in 1942.

Sir Acland was a wealthy aristocrat and former Liberal MP who was an earnest supporter of social, but bloodless, revolution. Many in the House of Commons laughed at his invectives, but he had an oratorical appeal that could pack halls across the country, fuelled by what an admirer once described as ‘the burning sincerity of his enthusiasm, his obvious joy… in his “discovery” of socialism’. In his fiery speeches, he castigated the old order and called for a ‘New Jerusalem’ of classless equality.
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Moreover, Acland was not simply a man of words: to demonstrate the strength of his convictions, he handed over his hereditary estates in Devon to the National Trust in 1943.

In addition to the creation of a classless society, Acland’s party (Priestley, who had little time for organized politics, left in the autumn of 1942) advocated common ownership of essential land and resources, democratic reform such as proportional representation, and ‘moral’ political behaviour, including an end to backstairs diplomacy and lying to the public. These measures politically embodied Irene Grant’s vision of socialism, and she followed the party with great interest, showering the highest praise on Acland, especially when he put his words into action and handed his lands over to the National Trust. It wasn’t Acland’s generous gift to the National Trust, nor Common Wealth’s commitment to common ownership or moral political behaviour, however, that helped them gain seats in Parliament, but rather the party’s insistence that the Beveridge Report be implemented immediately and in full.

On 21 March, Churchill finally responded to the growing public anger over the government’s handling of the Beveridge Report. In a lengthy speech, he reminded his audience that he had ‘framed’ the first unemployment insurance scheme and had introduced ‘my friend’ Sir William Beveridge to ‘public service’ thirty-five years before (thereby hoping to associate himself with social reform). But this was the only explicit mention of Beveridge, and the Prime Minister never mentioned Beveridge’s Plan by name. Instead, he promised what he called a ‘Four Years’ Plan’ designed to ‘maintain and progressively improve [Britons’] standards of life and labour’.