ABSTRACT
Beveridge said of his celebrated report of 1942 'the Plan for Social Security is first and foremost a method of redistributing income'. This evident 'egalitarian' claim for the report was long taken at face value, indeed it probably still is in popular imaginations - until the 'revisionist school' undertook to show that, with the passage of time, it was increasingly hard to support. That the glowing enthusiasm for 'Beveridge' had not abated by the mid-sixties is made clear by a passage from the classic book by Pauline Gregg on the Welfare State: It could almost be said that Beveridge had provided better than he knew. Certainly the child placed on the doorstep by Lloyd George had been nurtured so effectively and had grown to such a size that Lloyd George at least would have had no difficulty in recognizing it. Perhaps it is with the benefit of hindsight that such critiques gain plausibility but at times they appear rather all-embracing.
