ABSTRACT
As this text is written from within the discipline of law, a conventional beginning would take an overview of current and likely future welfare provision. However, the dramatic collapse of global markets from 2008 followed by international financial disaster have ensured that whatever developments were planned in Britain, the United States or elsewhere, all bets are off. The future is uncertain, current trends are no longer current, the poor are more vulnerable than ever, their numbers are increasing daily and no one can predict how and when the crisis will end. Today, schemes for the unemployed in Britain that concern forms of ‘workfare’ operated in partnership with private companies are failing as those companies withdraw their support. In all these contexts, it is likely that governments themselves are unsure what will be needed or what funds available to relieve poverty in the short term, never mind long-term trends. Worse, it is unclear what ideological, political, juristic or cultural norms will inform those choices. This book has no solutions and ‘history’ offers no lessons, save that we have continuously relieved poverty in England and Wales for hundreds of years through many economic and political crises, originally as a common law obligation. In reconstructing that legal past this work aims to demonstrate that welfare is not simply the brave new world of Beveridge, but a fundamental cultural and legal norm long embedded within our society. As Britain faces major financial problems it is timely to consider how in the past themes of negativity, bureaucracy and control became embedded within welfare provision and the role jurists played in those changes. It is important to note, therefore, that welfare scholarship in law and history has implications beyond academic careers and may influence changes that resonate unpleasantly upon the immediate personal experience of the most vulnerable in our society, the unemployed, the young, the sick, the disabled and the elderly amongst others. This is the reason for a consideration below of a recent publication on workfare, which illustrates, amongst other matters, how current theories concerning conditional welfare ‘rights’ draw largely upon the negativity of juristic and operative elements that were fundamental within the new poor law.
