ABSTRACT
Compared to the First World War, reconstruction planning started remarkably early during the Second War. As early as November 1940, it was suggested to Churchill that he should set up a Ministry of Reconstruction. He responded that it was ‘too soon to think of this’, but a couple of months later, he made a statement that, while it was not appropriate to seek to create a new society, ‘there certainly will be four or five great spheres of action in which practical and immediate action may be made’. When the Beveridge Report was issued, it might have been logical for the ministerial RP committee itself to review it. Phillips was supported by over a dozen senior officials from most of the departments which had been on the Beveridge Committee, plus the Board of Education. Beveridge may have oversimplified events in ascribing his banishment to a powerful ministerial adversary.
