ABSTRACT

Fifty years on, the essential features of the classic welfare state as created in Britain in the 1940s are still visible. But that period has also been marked by challenge, crisis and change:

– challenge from the political left and right to the principles and practices of the welfare state;

– crisis created principally by changing economic circumstances from the early 1970s that undermined the precarious political legitimacy of the post-war welfare consensus;

– change in the management and organization of welfare state services as well as in social and economic priorities.