ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at some of the main tenets of British Social Democracy in what is generally taken as the hey-day of the welfare state. It considers some of the principal weaknesses exposed in both Social Democracy and this welfare state over the subsequent three decades. As in France and Germany, British Social Democracy attained maturity and coherence as a unified but distinct intellectual force in the first two decades of the present century overshadowed as they were by the anticipation and experience of war. Given his concern to demonstrate the contribution to social solidarity which universalist social services can make, it is not perhaps surprising that Titmuss focuses upon the National Health Service, the most prized achievement of post-war Social Democratic universalism. Yet during much of the post-war period, Social Democrats both intellectuals and politicians have assumed that in social programmes, the costs imposed on the relatively privileged could remain limited and widespread support for such programmes thereby retained.
