30 - A Commitment to Welfare: the Life and Work of Richard Titmuss

Summary

Introduction

In 1964, Titmuss and Abel-Smith appeared on the recently launched television channel, BBC2, in its series ‘Tuesday Term’. Aimed at sixthform students, one strand, overseen by the LSE, concerned the social sciences. They spoke about Social Administration, defined as ‘the study of social needs and social services’. At university, it was taken by those wishing to work in the social services, or in government, who would perform better with an understanding of ‘how they fit into the wider picture’. Their field rested ‘heavily on history’, used comparative method, and studied official institutions and the charitable sector. But its ‘most searching questions’ were ‘philosophical’, and concerned the balance between individual and social responsibility. Social Administration's ‘special contribution’ was the ‘collection and study of the relevant facts’, used to define various forms of need. The next step was to determine whether these needs had been met. In a democracy, universities had an important role in ‘ferreting out facts which may be uncomfortable for the government’, whose ministers may have made claims subsequently revealed as untrue.n Three years later, Titmuss gave a speech entitled ‘Welfare State and Welfare Society’. But, he told his audience, that title had not been his choice. He was ‘no more enamoured today of the indefinable abstraction “The Welfare State” than I was some twenty years ago’ when ‘the term acquired an international as well as national popularity’. Such ‘Generalized slogans’ were intellectually stifling, led to moral complacency, and to a retreat into ‘our presumptive cosy British world of welfare’. It could be safely assumed, though, that the ‘reading habits of international bankers and economists’ did not include ‘studies on welfare and the condition of the poor’. What had arisen, nonetheless, was a depiction of ‘welfare’ as a ‘public burden’.

These talks illustrate two of Titmuss's central preoccupations. First, from his appointment at the LSE he sought to reshape Social Administration by way of rigorous empirical research, underpinned by more ‘philosophical’ concerns. The field had practical applications, including holding those in power to account, but it should also play a leading role in promoting a better society.