Introduction

The workforce was largely male and the majority was employed in manual work, living in rented accommodation and in families with mostly one earner and two married parents. The development of modern institutions and their relation to contemporary identity formation are the subject of Modernity and Self Identity. The Beveridge Report published in 1942 expressed the challenge in terms of the pressing need to deal with the five giant evils of physical want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, or in today’s less biblical terms poverty, ill health, poor educational opportunity, substandard housing and unemployment. Over the same post-war period British governments have had to manage the effects of these changes in terms of the consequent demands and expectations for greater equality of opportunity, income, wealth, education and health, for freedom of expression, and for reconsideration of the rights and responsibilities of governments, employers and citizens.