Afterword

This study has explored the persistence of eugenic thought in Britain between 1945 and 1979, arguing that it did not fade into obscurity in this period but in many respects gained a new lease on life. Eugenic concerns with the health of the population overlapped with the aims of post-war reconstruction to a significant extent, and, as we have seen, some of the key architects of the Welfare State had close ties with the eugenics movement. In consequence, eugenic ideas had a demonstrable influence on aspects of post-war government policy. For example, Cyril Burt’s work on IQ test- ing was critical to the argument for a tripartite education policy, while C. P. Blacker’s analysis of ‘problem families’ contributed to the development of policies relating to child development and institutional care. In addi- tion, eugenic thought had an impact on a number of academic disciplines, including social medicine, sociology and, most notably, genetic science. As Blacker argued in Eugenics: Galton and After, eugenics was a complex subject that involved ‘policy, science and sentiment’, and a key strand in this book has been an examination of the sentiments, or what Raymond Williams would call the ‘structures of feeling’, associated with eugenics. ¹ As we have seen, these can be traced not only in literary and popular fiction but in a wide range of books directed at the general reader in the fields of biological science, psychology, sociology and social policy.