Liberalism and the welfare state in Britain, 1890-1945

This chapter establishes that the British welfare state was the creation of Liberals as much as socialists. By the early twentieth century, the “New Liberalism” was moving the Liberal Party away from Gladstonian Liberalism, and the Asquith government took major steps toward a welfare state before World War I. The economists arguing for the welfare state included many Liberals, notably Alfred Marshall, J. A. Hobson, A. C. Pigou, William Beveridge, and John Maynard Keynes. British Liberalism was varied, and influential strands within it were strongly supportive of the welfare state. Beveridge and Keynes, in particular, were responsible for much of the intellectual architecture of the welfare state as it was implemented by the first postwar Labour government of Clement Attlee.