ABSTRACT
The attempt by the new right to alter radically the structures of welfare provision has prompted a wide range of intellectual responses and the formulation of alternative strategies. These can broadly be grouped into three streams: first, the pragmatic acceptance by ‘welfare pluralists’ of many of the new directions in policy, second, defensive attempts of Fabians to adapt the Keynesian Welfare State to new circumstances, and third, the development of ‘offensive* radical reformist counter-strategies. The changing nature of social policy over the past two decades has contributed to the widespread acceptance among intellectuals that ‘things can never be the same again*, that the post-war Keynesian Welfare State has been unable to meet expectations, be they for redistribution, consumer participation, and efficiency in delivery of services. None the less, there has been a tendency to react more to the rhetoric of the new right than to its actual achievements. Undoubtedly the rhetoric has served as a useful weapon for the assault on the Keynesian Welfare State. Of equal importance, however, has been the flexibility of the new right in action - its pragmatic approach in the face of short-or medium-term institutional constraints, of social pressures, and of established patterns of loyalty, its willingness to adjust its long term strategy in the face of everyday realities, its ability, at least for the moment, to obscure the inconsistencies and contradictions in carrying out policies. Perhaps most importantly, Thatcherism has been able to operate directly on ‘the real and manifestly contradictory experience of the popular classes under social-democratic corporatism* (Hall, 1983: 31).
