The impact on state welfare on the British working-

class family (1945-67)

Anirudh Mandagere

1

Introduction

Defined as a ‘synthesis of social security, universal health and welfare services,

education, and full employment’, the establishment of a welfare state was central to

Attlee’s ministry.1 Many figures felt that only a programme of such magnitude could

help support families and rebuild Britain after the chaos of the Second World War.

The Royal Commission on Population reported in 1949 that welfare assistance in the

form of family allowances would encourage parenthood and reverse population

decline.2 However, others negatively viewed the welfare state’s impact on families.

Eminent lawyer and author Claud Mullins blamed it for ending the ‘historic duty of

relations’ to support elderly members of their families.3 Despite their differences, both

sides conceded that the welfare state had had a fundamental impact on working-class

family life.

Yet, some contemporary figures in the post-war period felt that the impact of the

welfare state on working-class families was negligible. From personal experience,

Richard Hoggart was eager to stress in his Uses of Literacy (1957) that ‘the basic

pattern… remains as it has been for many years’.4 Lively debate has continued over

whether the ‘basic pattern’ of working-class family life continued after the post-war

welfare state. Comments have been offered not only by historians, but those

concerned with contemporary welfare policy. Abel-Smith and Townsend’s pioneering

work The Poor and the Poorest (1965) provided the first serious challenge to the

belief that the welfare state had abolished poverty in Britain, noting that 17.9% of

1 J. Fink, ‘Welfare, Poverty and Social Inequalities’ in P. Addison and H. Jones, (ed.), A Companion to Contemporary Britain 1939-2000, (Oxford, 2005), p. 263.2 J. Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945, (Oxford, 1992), p. 16.3 M. Abbott, Family Affairs: A History of the Family in 20th Century England, (London & New York, 2003) p. 86. 4 R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, (London, 1957), p. 40.

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households in 1960 were either living in poverty or on the margins of poverty.5

Research on the ‘basic pattern’ has encouraged historians to focus on the

conservatism of the welfare state. Indeed, Jane Lewis’ work has thrown light on how

state welfare’s promotion of family bonds was designed to restore pre-war gender

roles.6

Hoggart’s assertion will be critiqued in this study through a wide range of sources.

Peter Young and Michael Willmott’s Family and Kinship in East London (1957)

surveyed the impact of housing policy on working-class communities in the East End,

and has been extensively discussed in the historiography on the welfare state.7 Equally

certain social surveys have been neglected by historians. The incorporation of

Anthony Richmond’s Migration and Race Relations in an English City: A Study of

Bristol into this study offers a fascinating insight on the relationship between

immigrants and the welfare state. Furthermore, contemporary fiction will also be used

to infer assumptions about the post-war welfare state among the working-class. Both

Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Shelagh Delaney’s

play A Taste of Honey were written to capture the everyday reality of working-class

life. Novels elucidate individuals’ feelings and motives more honestly than social

surveys. The use of internal monologues in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and

distancing in A Taste of Honey provide opportunities for representations of working-

class individuals to reveal their private thoughts.

5 I. Gazeley, Poverty in Britain: 1900-62, (London. 2003), p. 179. 6 Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945, p. 17. 7 See for example, J. Finch and D. Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1949-59’, in D. Clark, (ed.), Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change: Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne 1944-88, (London, 1991).

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Hoggart’s evidence for the continuation of working-class family life in the 1950s rests

on his understanding of the family’s material security and its gender roles. Thus, the

following sections will examine both these aspects, and discuss whether they were

altered by the welfare state. In doing so, this will shed light on how effective

government policy was in its aims of providing a basic standard of economic security

and restoring gender roles.

The definition of ‘family’ is important in this regard. Contemporaries contrasted the

‘normal’ family against the ‘problem family’. The ‘normal’ family was one centred

on a middle-class ideal: a nuclear family in which the separate spheres of both sexes

were grounded. The ‘problem family’, as defined by middle-class social workers

usually consisted of a working-class single mother unable to control her delinquent

children.8 Some historians have sought to recover the voices of single-parent families

in the post-war period. Pat Thane and Tanya Evans’s work Sinners? Scroungers?

Saints? Unmarried Mothers in Postwar England drew attention to their experiences.9

However, single-parent families still remain relatively overlooked in histories of the

post-war welfare state. Texts such as A Taste of Honey offer a fresh perspective on

how far non-nuclear family types were affected by the welfare state.

Material Security, Community and the Welfare State

In 1942 The Beveridge Report was published. It promised a concerted attack against

the ‘Five Great Evils’ of Society: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. It

was hoped that the system of family allowances, a National Health Service and full

8 P. Starkey, ‘The Feckless Mother: Women, Poverty and Social Workers in Wartime and Postwar England’, Women’s History Review, 9 (2000), p.542.9 P. Thane and T. Evans, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints?: Unmarried Mothers in Twentieth-Century England, (Oxford, 2012), p. 112.

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employment would abolish extreme poverty. Yet in 1965 the Child Poverty Action

Programme brought to light the failure of these reforms to bring about economic

peace of mind for working-class families.10 Hoggart felt that the welfare state had not

provided material security for working-class families, since they still operated on a

‘week-by-week affair’.11 The effectiveness of the welfare state has been studied

extensively by historians and sociologists. Joanna Bourke comments that the ‘threat of

poverty was disabled’ for working-class families by the post-war welfare reforms.12

On the contrary, this chapter will show that the existence of families with additional

needs that the state did not recognise limited the effectiveness of social policy.

There is some truth in Bourke’s statement. The 1944 Employment Policy White Paper

upheld a commitment to full employment, the National Health Service Act of 1946

upheld free access to healthcare and the National Assistance Act of 1948 provided a

solid safety net for most working-class families.13 The effects of this were dramatic.

Whereas the north-east of England experienced an unemployment rate of 38% in

1932, in 1949 unemployment only totalled 3%.14. In theory, all working-class families

would be entitled to cradle-to-grave social care by the state, without the need to

undergo a humiliating means test. In comparison, pre-war state welfare was a

patchwork of limited localised schemes, in which 10-20% of claimants were not

covered by unemployment insurance at all.15

10 T. Evans, ‘Poverty’, in N. Crowson, M. Hilton, J. McKay, (ed.) NGOs in Contemporary Britain: Non-State Actors in Society and Politics since 1945, (London, 2009), p. 148.11 Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, p. 41 12 J. Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1880-1960, (London, 1994), p. 25. 13 R. Lowe, ‘Postwar Welfare’, in P. Johnson, (ed.) 20th Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change, (London, 1994), p. 359. 14 K. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945-51, (Oxford, 1985), p. 183. 15 B. Harris, ‘Unemployment and the Dole in Interwar Britain’, in 20th Century Britain, p. 207.

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The effects of freedom from material deprivation were reflected in the fiction of the

1950s. The modern affluent worker was immortalized in the figure of Arthur Seaton,

the protagonist of Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Born into a

working-class family, Sillitoe aimed to depict the lives of the men who had worked

alongside him in the Raleigh bicycle factory.16 Even though Arthur shows disdain

towards the ‘snot-gobbling gett’ who collects his national insurance, his status within

society is a product of the welfare state.17 Arthur is a man defined by his work,

described as a ‘model of industry’.18 His affluence means that he can afford

fashionable suits which enhance his masculinity. Arthur’s musings reflect the

increasing freedom that the welfare state brought to workers:

‘If the gaffer got onto you now, you could always tell him where to put the job

and where to work somewhere else.’19

Here, Sillitoe shows that the commitment to full employment and a steady wage gives

Arthur a sense of self-worth and contributes to his pugnacious personality. This was

grounded in the reality of post-war economic prosperity for working-class families.

The doubling of the average weekly wage from £8.30 to £15.35 for men over 21

reflects the new ‘affluent worker’ that Sillitoe aimed to depict in his novel.20

Yet, Sillitoe is careful to distinguish such affluence with the continuation of grinding

poverty for some working-class families. The warmth of the industrial suburb where

Arthur and his father live is contrasted with Aunt Ada’s residence in ‘The Meadows’,

a low-lying dark, decaying slum area. Both Aunt Ada and Arthur’s father represent an

16 A. Marwick, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Room at the Top and the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19 (1984), p. 141. 17 A. Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, (London, 1970), p. 134. 18 Ibid. p. 30 19 Ibid. p. 25 20 Marwick, ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, p. 129.

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older generation of the working-class who experienced the Depression. However,

while Arthur’s father is free from drudgery and able to afford luxuries such as a

television, Aunt Ada’s family’s position has not been significantly advanced by the

welfare state. She is lonely and unable to keep control of her delinquent children, all

while living in decrepit housing.21 Her poor position reflects the status of many

elderly working-class people, for whom the welfare state failed to bring about

material security. Attlee’s welfare state was centred on the figure of the working-class

male breadwinner. The right to social security was based on those with national

insurance contributions, who were almost always wage-earners.22 Nationalisation of

industry and a commitment to full employment alleviated the financial burden on

working-class wage-earners, but overshadowed the need for welfare reform among

elderly members of the working-class family. Pensions were still drawn out of the

means-tested National Assistance fund, meaning that elderly members of the

working-class family were still dependent on either the goodwill of their relatives or

means-tested benefits.23

The association of means-tested relief with the old Poor Laws explains why take-up

was initially low, indeed only a quarter of pensioners turned to National Assistance

for relief.24 David Vincent asserts that kinship networks often filled this pension gap

by providing amenities in place of the welfare state. Reflecting on data which showed

that two-thirds of the elderly were sharing housekeeping costs with various relatives,

he notes that ‘in the established communities, they maintained extensive and mutually

supportive contact with their relatives’.25 Community support was vital not only for 21 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 73. 22 Fink, ‘Welfare’, p. 268. 23 Ibid. p. 26824 D. Vincent, Poor Citizens: The State and the Poor in Twentieth Century Britain, (Essex, 1991), p. 135. 25 Ibid. p. 139

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elderly individuals, but also for a significant number of working-class families.

Community and kinship support could provide the material security that the welfare

support was unable to carry out. This support was vital for new immigrant families,

whose needs were often overlooked by local welfare agencies. Indeed, the findings of

the Cullingworth Committee demonstrated the existence of an unconscious bias in

local housing authorities which disadvantaged immigrant families.26 Richmond’s

study of Bristol in Migration and Race Relations in an English City demonstrates the

inadequacy of the welfare state to provide material security for working-class

immigrant families. Funding cuts meant that the local Council of Social Service in

Bristol was unable to provide a full-time welfare officer to deal with the needs of

immigrant families.27 This bias against immigrant families meant that such families

relied increasingly on ethnic community support for material security. Indeed the

survey found while 49% of immigrant respondents in the survey area would turn to a

neighbour in an emergency, only 8% said they would turn to a social welfare

agency.28 Furthermore, faced with discrimination, the immigrant kinship group were

essential for providing access to employment and housing.29 There is evidence that

some welfare state officials were aware of the difficulties that immigrants faced, for

example in Bristol the welfare agency directed West Indian immigrants away from

known discriminatory employers.30 However, ultimately the local welfare agency was

inefficient in dealing with the specific needs of immigrants in Bristol, and so most

relied on the community for material security. The community portrayed in Migration

and Race Relations substantiates Joanna Bourke’s conception of the ‘contracting

community’, in which ‘community’ is formed out of the material needs of individuals 26 A. Richmond, Migration and Race Relations in an English City: A Study of Bristol, (London, 1973), p. 130.27 Ibid. pp. 43-4. 28 Ibid. p. 173 29 Ibid. p. 4530 Ibid. 43

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and families.31 Kinship networks in Bristol were formed out of a need to protect

themselves against emergencies and ensure financial security. Mary Chamberlain’s

research validates this trend, noting that ‘support networks’ were created by

Caribbean migrants to facilitate the arrival of their families.32 It demonstrates that the

basic reliance on the ‘contracting community’ was still prevalent among immigrant

families.

Yet the immigrant families in Bristol were privileged, for they at least had a

community to fall back on for support. The families detailed in Richmond’s survey

conformed to the middle-class ideal of the nuclear family. However, single-parent

families failed to conform to this ideal. This meant that they were either stigmatized

from the community, or lived in such areas where ‘community’ was non-existent.

Indeed, in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Aunt Ada’s ‘community’ in ‘The

Meadows’ consists of drunks and prostitutes. As a single parent, she is left isolated

from various kinship networks and only subsists on her meagre social security.

Equally, Delaney’s 1958 play A Taste of Honey examines these themes in greater

detail. She emphasizes how estranged Helen and Jo are from the established

neighbourhood. The community portrayed in the play provide no material security

and shuns them for their ‘unrespectable’ nature. This point is underlined by Helen’s

claim that neighbours call Jo a ‘silly, little whore’ for falling pregnant.33

In theory, the welfare state should have filled the gap left by the lack of kinship and

community support. However, welfare is strikingly absent from A Taste of Honey;

31 Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, p. 159.32 M. Chamberlain, ‘Gender and the Narratives of Migration’, History Workshop Journal, 32, (1997), p. 90. 33 S. Delaney, A Taste of Honey, (London, 1975), p. 61.

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indeed Jo refuses to go the maternity health clinic and hospital.34 The absence of the

welfare state in A Taste of Honey is indicative of its cultural biases. It is true that for

the families of unmarried mothers, the welfare state did provide a series of

untrammelled benefits. They were eligible for free healthcare and a maternity grant of

£12.10s.35 However, an attachment to the nuclear family structure meant that many

single-parent families were still in a position of material insecurity. From the outset of

the play, Delaney paints a picture of the ‘comfortless’ dilapidated household, in which

‘everything in it’s falling apart’.36 In an age when the working-class home was

described by sociologist Mark Abrams as a ‘place that is warm, comfortable and able

to provide its own fireside entertainment’, Delaney demonstrates that the older slum-

like housing still persisted.37 Despite the growth of council housing in the 1950s,

single-parent families missed out on these homes because allocation systems gave

preference to those needing most room, which invariably benefited married families.38

The research of Thane and Evans has shown that lone mothers were still reliant on

voluntary organisations for housing in the post-war era. By 1958 the inadequacy of

state provision meant that the voluntary sector there were four times as many as

voluntary homes run by the Church of England Moral Welfare Association for

Mothers as statutory ones.39 This demonstrates that material insecurity and reliance on

charity were still prevalent among lone-parent families.

A study of single-parent families and the welfare state is crucial in understanding the

gender and class biases of the welfare state that limited provision of material security.

34 Ibid. p. 6135 Thane and Evans, Sinners?, p. 107. 36 Delaney, A Taste of Honey, p. 7. 37 C. Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40, (2005), p. 341. 38 Thane and Evans, Sinners?, p. 112. 39 Ibid. p. 109.

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Most contemporary sociologists overlooked single-parent families in their social

surveys. Hoggart defined the working-class family in The Uses of Literacy as a

nuclear family in order to impress upon the reader the strength of working-class

family bonds.40 The welfare state’s provision of material security for working-class

families was dependent on whether they conformed to the ‘respectable’ middle-class

nuclear ideal. For families which did not conform to this standard the welfare state

was inadequate in providing material security. Community help or voluntary

organisations continued to be the only source of respite for such families. It is worth

noting that these cultural attitudes persisted for the most of the ‘permissive’ 1960s.

For example, an increase in family allowance was rejected as Labour Party policy in

1964. It was felt that they were unpopular among Labour voters because they

subsidized ‘feckless’ families.41 This demonstrates that the welfare state’s cultural

bias had become the ‘common sense’ of the period. Such biases meant that non-

nuclear family life was still financially precarious.

Gender Roles and the Welfare State

‘The mother is the working-centre, always with too much to do and with her thoughts

revolving around the life of this family room’.42 Hoggart’s nostalgia for the ‘lost’

working-class was clearly represented in his view of gender roles. Based on defined

separate spheres, gender roles were regarded as an impenetrable part of working-class

family life. Fears over the breaking of family bonds during the war committed the

state to restore normative gender roles. The Norwood Committee of 1943 strongly

supported the inclusion of domestic science in the curriculum so that girls could

40 Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, p. 33. 41 H. Glennester, British Social Policy since 1945, (Oxford, 1995), p. 108.42 Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, p. 37.

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become ‘potential makers of the home’.43 The welfare state’s approach to gender

issues has been extensively studied by historians. Elizabeth Wilson’s seminal work

Women and the Welfare State pioneered a feminist critique of the welfare state,

arguing that it amounted to the ‘state organisation of domestic life’.44 However, much

of the historiography has overlooked its effects on conceptions of masculinity. Jane

Lewis argued that ‘the role of the mother was given priority’ over the father by the

welfare state.45 This section will further elucidate the extensiveness of ‘domesticity’,

focusing on the welfare state’s promotion of a new masculinity based on the family.

Feminist criticism of the welfare state’s reinforcement of gender roles often targeted

the National Health Service. It reinforced an unequal sexual division of labour, with

men dominating the managerial positions and women prevalent in subordinate

positions as ancillary workers.46 This unequal division meant that medical conditions

were subject to patriarchal norms, which marginalized women’s specific medical

needs. Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning demonstrates this trend with

particular regard to women’s control over their own bodies. With no effective birth

control for women, such responsibility falls upon Arthur which he fails to consider.

‘What’s the good o’ goin with a married woman if you’ve got to use a

frenchie?’47

43 Birmingham Feminist History Group, ‘Feminism as Femininity in the 1950s,’ Feminist Review, 3, (1979), p. 51. 44 E. Wilson, Women and the Welfare State, (London, 1977), p. 9. 45 Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945, p. 19. 46 Lowe, ‘Postwar Welfare’, p. 370. 47 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 69.

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Here, Sillitoe demonstrates how lack of proper birth control for unmarried women

reinforces dependence on men for control over their bodies. The lack of freely

available birth control contributed to the marginalisation of female needs and

cemented the woman’s role primarily as a mother. The monopoly position of the

National Health Service meant that the medical profession could afford to be

unresponsive to women’s specific needs, since there was no adequate competition.48

Free access to birth control for women lay at the hands of the government. The

development of the pill in the 1960s represented birth control that was controlled by

women. However, the health monopoly meant that it was not free of charge and only

distributed to married women until 1967.49 Thus, the welfare state’s monopoly

position meant that the state could reinforce its vision of gender roles by neglecting

female needs outside of the maternal role.

The lack of attention to female needs that a health monopoly engendered is reflected

further in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Brenda’s abortion is not carried out

within the safe domains of the NHS, but in a ‘hot bath with hot gin’ following an ‘Old

Wives’ Tale’ told to Arthur by his aunt.50 The welfare state engendered a cultural

hegemony that primarily regarded women as mothers, despite women making up 31%

of the total labour force in 1951.51 Aunt Ada’s ‘treatment’ for unwanted pregnancy

demonstrates the limitations of the welfare state. It echoes Hoggart’s assertion that the

pre-war working-class relied on superstition in ‘anything affecting health’.52 The

inclusion of the Old Wives’ Tale in the novel reflects the continual pertinence of

superstition for when medical ailments went beyond the remit of the welfare state. For

48 Lowe, ‘Postwar Welfare’, p. 370. 49 Thane and Evans, Sinners?, p. 120. 50 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 78. 51 P. Thane, ‘Women since 1945’ in P. Johnson, 20th Century Britain, p. 393. 52 Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, p. 29.

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working-class women in Brenda’s position, the welfare state failed to address their

needs and forced them to revert back to the superstitious treatment of the pre-war era.

The welfare state’s failure to meet the specific needs of women is also reflected in its

attitude to single mothers. The 1944 Employment Policy White Paper defined the

commitment to full employment as commitment to full male employment. For most

women, eligibility depended upon a consistent record of national insurance

contributions, which most gave up when married. This meant that social security

benefits for non-working married mothers were dependent on their husbands’

contributions, which reinforced the economic dependence of women upon men.53 For

divorced mothers such as Helen in A Taste of Honey, access to benefits would have

been dependent on the unpopular mean-tested National Assistance Fund. Thus,

Delaney implies that Helen is more willing to live off the ‘immoral earnings’ of her

lovers than undergo the means-testing for benefits.54 The play implicitly satirizes the

middle-class ideal of the nuclear family, and the assumption that this model

automatically makes a family more respectable and worthy of benefits. Marriage is

treated as a joke in Delaney’s play; indeed Peter’s marriage proposal is notable in its

offhand manner: ‘Come on down to the church and I’ll make an honest woman of

you’.55 Moreover, Helen is only interested in marriage with Peter because of his

money, evidenced by her claim that ‘he’s got a wallet full of reasons’. Despite Peter’s

proclamation that he ‘dragged her out of the gutter’; he is portrayed as a comic

drunken buffoon than a force of moral improvement.56 In A Taste of Honey, the

single-parent family is neither pitied nor derided, but accepted as a fact of working-

53 Lowe, ‘Postwar Welfare’, p. 372. 54 Delaney, A Taste of Honey, p. 7. 55 Ibid. 18 56 Ibid. 68

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class life. By satirizing marriage and the nuclear family, Delaney implicitly criticizes

government agencies and wider society for castigating families who don’t fit this

model.

The relationship between lone-parent families and the welfare state has been

enhanced by the research of Carolyn Steedman. Her claim that such families came to

be seen as poor when ‘no longer keep their stories private…[and were] forced to tell

them to Poor Law Guardians’ resonates in A Taste of Honey. 57 Delaney’s Salford is a

world in which working-class families cannot afford the luxury of privacy. From the

outset of the play, Helen notes that many of the facilities are communal.58 Distancing

in the play reflects a means in which Delaney's characters can grasp some 'privacy' in

their surroundings, and allows Jo to vent her innermost feelings to the audience.

Privacy of thought runs throughout the play and explains Jo's reluctance to use the

welfare state. By going to the maternity clinic, we can infer that she will have to

recount her family’s history of infidelity, poverty and unrespectability. Thus,

Delaney’s use of distancing adds to the importance of privacy and the threat of the

welfare state in the play. Such fears were not without foundation; the Pacifist Service

Unit archives of the late 1940s reflect the prejudices of social workers in stigmatizing

‘problem families’. Histories of promiscuity and sexually illicit affairs were opened

up by social workers.59 The pre-war experience of government welfare for many

working-class mothers was an interfering government inspector who disrupted family

life.60 For single mothers this process continued, serving to cement their inferiority in

the eyes of the welfare state.

57 C. Steedman, ‘State-sponsored autobiography’, in B. Conekin, F. Mort and C. Water, Moments of Modernity: Britain 1945-64, (London, 1999), p. 53. 58 Delaney, A Taste of Honey, p.7. 59 Starkey, ‘The Feckless Mother’, p. 545. 60 Ibid. p. 546

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However, it is not entirely true to suggest that the welfare state only served to

strengthen pre-war gender relations. State welfare in the post-war era was increasingly

targeted at encouraging ‘domesticity’ for men, by encouraging them to spend more

time with their families. By 1947 reports that 71% of divorces were granted on the

grounds of adultery prompted David Mace, the general secretary of the National

Marriage Guidance Council, to note that action needed to be taken to rescue marriages

which had ‘got stuck’.61 Indeed, the 1956 Royal Commission on Divorce focused on

the need to ‘promote healthy married life and to safeguard the wellbeing and interest

of the child’.62 The intent of post-war social reconstruction to consolidate family life

fuelled increased interest in ‘companionate marriage’, in which it was hoped that

husbands and wives would have a closer personal relationship. Crucially, the

‘companionate marriage’ model encouraged by the Commission was not gender-

specific, targeting both husbands and wives who had grown distant from each other.63

State welfare became a tool to encourage both sexes to focus on restoring family

bonds.

This need encouraged a new family-orientated conception of masculinity. Full

employment and higher wages had a conscious effect on some working-class men’s

sense of family responsibility. Pre-war conceptions of male responsibility to the

family were essentially economic. The father was regarded as the major breadwinner

and the source of economic stability, while the mother provided emotional care for

children.64 However, the material security provided by the welfare state in the form of

61 K. Kiernan, H. Land and J. Lewis, Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain, (Oxford, 1998), pp. 80-1.62 Ibid. p. 81. 63 Finch and Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction’, pp.7-9. 64 L. King, ‘Hidden Fathers? The Significance of Fatherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Contemporary British History, 26, (2012), p. 26.

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full employment ameliorated the burden of economic responsibility placed on fathers.

Furthermore, shorter working hours encouraged some working-class fathers to spend

more time with children.65 The role of material security in providing a more family-

orientated masculinity is detailed in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur’s

masculinity rests both on his affluence and his father-figure status to his nephews.

Arthur’s affluence encourages his nephews to see him as a male role model, as

reflected in the omniscient narration detailing his nephews’ emotions:

‘He…loved his rich uncle who came from the towering world of work and

sent pound notes across the dazzling air of the Friday-night kitchen.’66

Here, Sillitoe depicts a gentler, more compassionate side to Arthur. The products of

affluence are not solely spent on luxuries for Arthur, but on toys for the children. His

free time is not only spent in the traditional male working-class space of the public

house, but also playing with his nephews. This child-orientated masculinity was

reflected in contemporary media. Newspaper quizzes defining the ‘perfect daddy’

placed a great emphasis on the emotional connection that fathers had with their

children.67 Though Arthur is not actually a father to his nephews, he provides the

father-figure that Margaret’s ‘useless husband’ is unable to carry out.68 It is important

to not to exaggerate the rise of family-orientated masculinity. Sillitoe’s reference to

Margaret’s ‘useless husband’ demonstrates that not all fathers spent more time with

their family. In occupations such as mining, the long hours and strenuous activity

meant that the male activity was firmly centred outside the home.69 Moreover,

65 Ibid. 3666 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 65.67 King, ‘Hidden Fathers?’, p. 26. 68 Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, p. 37. 69 Finch and Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction’, p. 21.

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Arthur’s family-orientated masculinity is notably based outside his immediate family.

It allows him to engage with children without marital responsibilities. Indeed

Sillitoe’s metaphor of the council estate as a ‘giant web’ reflects Arthur’s fear that

marriage to Doreen will trap him into a life of domesticity.70 However, Arthur’s use of

affluence and shorter working hours to provide comfort to his nephews demonstrates

that the welfare state could play a role in encouraging compassionate father figures.

The growing importance of the father-child relationship was elucidated further in

Family and Kinship in East London. Willmott and Young’s analysis showed that

fathers spent more time in their new council houses with their children. Increased

attachment to children was explained partially by growing aspirations for the younger

generation. The 1944 Education Act established the principle of free secondary

education. Indeed, progressives argued that schooling should be less formal, more

welcoming and structured around the child’s needs and aspirations.71 Moreover, the

infant mortality rate dropped significantly from 61.5 per 100,000 between 1930-2, to

29.4 per 100,000 in the period 1949-53, which demonstrated the vast improvement in

child’s health due to the welfare state. 72 An increased emphasis on the needs of the

child saw some fathers in Greenleigh more inclined to sacrifice luxuries so that their

children could thrive. This was reflected by one father’s claim that:

‘If you’re going to put your children first, you can’t spend your money on

drinking and smoking’73

70 S. Daniels and S. Rycroft, ‘Mapping the Modern City: Alan Sillitoe’s Nottingham Novels’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18, (1993), p. 473. 71 R. Lowe, ‘Education’ in A Companion to Contemporary Britain, p. 282.72 E. Pamuk, ‘Social Class Inequality in Mortality, from 1921 to 1972 in England and Wales’, Population Studies: A Journal of Demography, 39, (1985), p. 20. 73 M. Young and P. Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London, (London, 1957), p. 144.

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The welfare state’s role in creating a healthier, better educated generation meant that

both mothers and fathers sought to give them a better start in life. Willmott and

Young noted as well how ‘the father as well as the mother takes a hand in the care of

the children’.74 Indeed, Ronald Fletcher’s study of Family and Marriage in Britain

suggested that ‘parents aimed at providing children better opportunities than they

themselves had enjoyed’.75 Increased aspirations for children fuelled by the welfare

state encouraged more fathers to take a stronger role in the care of the children.

However, other aspirations were overlooked in Willmott and Young’s analysis of the

family-orientated masculinity. They saw running hot water as ‘compensation’ for

disrupted kinship relations than central to the man’s social status.76 The fact that new

council houses were furnished at a higher expense meant that life inside the home

became more central for working-class men.77 New ‘male’ leisure activities such as

watching television were designed for the home. Welfare authorities hoped that the

increased comfort of council estates would cultivate stronger families. The Royal

Commission on Population noted in 1949 that the housing shortage was one of the

‘main deterrents of parenthood’.78 Thus, larger council houses were built so that it was

more convenient to bring up children and foster strong families. The comfort of the

new council house meant that men cultivated a family-orientated masculinity by

centring themselves more on the home.

Fears over family disintegration fuelled the welfare state’s mission to encourage men

and women to build stronger family relationships. For women, this meant that the

74 Ibid. 2875 King, ‘Hidden Fathers?’, p. 37. 76 Willmott and Young, Family and Kinship, p. 146. 77 R. Mckibbin, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918-51, (Oxford, 2000), pp. 195-6. 78 Finch and Summerfield, ‘Social Reconstruction’, p. 9.

19

state promoted the traditional role of mother and wife within the nuclear family. For

men the state encouraged a gentler, considerate and more ‘companionate’ role to play

within the family. Such types were not universal; indeed Abbott’s research

demonstrates how the needs of the local economy were more influential in moulding

gender roles.79 Yet, by tackling the impediments of idleness, squalor, disease, ignorant

and want, the welfare state made it easier for men and women to fulfil family-

orientated roles.

Conclusion

Gramsci’s notion of the ‘cultural hegemony’ is central to this study. The welfare state

was rooted in middle-class conceptions of the gender and the family, which came to

be seen as the ‘common sense’ of the period. Section one showed that the state’s

promotion of the middle-class nuclear family type was responsible for the limitations

of the welfare state to provide material security. Section two showed that concern

over the health of the middle-class nuclear family meant that both genders were

encouraged to become more family-orientated.

For the older generation, the ‘basic pattern’ that Hoggart described continued in the

post-war era. Even for nuclear families, the apparent ‘affluence’ that the welfare state

had brought was reliant on consumer credit. Indeed, in Liverpool hire purchase

agreements and credit checks accounted for up to £4 of a household’s weekly

expenditure.80 The prevalence of debt meant that Hoggart’s ‘week-by-week’ claim

still rang true for working-class families. Furthermore, despite the growing number of

men engaged in a more family-orientated masculinity, such trends were ultimately

79 Abbot, Family Affairs, p. 99. 80 S. Todd, ‘Affluence, Class and Crown Street: Reinvestigating the Working Class,’ Contemporary British History, 22, (2008), p. 506.

20

limited. While Hoggart noted that ‘some working-class husbands…will take turns

with the baby’, he argues that most wives regarded the ‘good husband’ as one who

would ‘[bring] money home in regularly’, thus demonstrating that fathers were still

regarded as primarily breadwinners.81 Even in families where men were engaged with

their children, the roles of male and female parents were understood to be very

different.82

Yet the welfare state was influential in changing family life for the younger

generation. The youth who benefited as children from cradle-to-grave care and free

secondary education later became synonymous with the affluence and confidence of

the modern teenager. The very nature of the welfare state fuelled individualism.

Freedom from material insecurity meant that such children grew up stronger, more

confident, and released from the burden of supporting their family. It also meant that

most working-class individuals were no longer dependent on community help to

survive. Indeed, in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Sillitoe omits community

institutions such as friendly societies in his presentation of Arthur’s daily life. State

welfare empowers Arthur by making him self-sufficient and enhances his

individualism by releasing him of any personal debt to other individuals surrounding

him. As Migration and Race Relations demonstrates, the decline of community

institutions was not absolute. Nonetheless its decline was widespread enough to create

self-sufficient workers who embraced individualism. Indeed the portrayal of Arthur as

an autarkic individual demonstrates this trend. Increased individualism encouraged

the younger generation to challenge the mores of the older generation. Hoggart’s

distaste for the post-war ‘juke box boys’ with their ‘drape suits, picture ties and

81 Ibid. pp. 51-2. 82 King, ‘Hidden Fathers?’, p. 38.

21

American slouch’ represents the generational clash between the pre and post-welfare

state generations.83 Youth attraction towards American fashion represented a rejection

of the old wartime community spirit, and an embrace of the individualism and

empowerment that were associated with American culture.84

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