#24 English Social Services by Sir George Newman
The fly leaf can usually be relied on to provide an indication of what is to follow; and it can be relied on never to be impartial. In this case the fly leaf contains a quotation from the author, Sir George Newman: “The origin of our Social Services lies mainly in the fixed and ancient laws of England; and partly on the beneficent devices of voluntary social aspirations and mutual goodwill. It is a strange medley of State regulation and humanitarian endeavour. Both derive from similar, if not always identical, sources of the heart, mind, and will of free people. Both have similar instincts and aims, and adopt democratic methods for their fulfilment. Both are inspired by the kind of humanism which has made England what she has been and is.” Overblown and turgid, but we get the idea that the overarching principle behind social services is humanitarian, principally humanitarian outreach by government.
The blurb goes on to describe Newman, as “one of the greatest authorities in the world on Social Welfare and Public Health”, and adds that he was for many years Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education.
It would be interesting (I think) to compare the landscape of social services in England in 1941 when Newman was writing with that landscape today, and interesting to compare the English scene with the Australian scene; but this is thesis territory and not for here. There has been little change to categorises of social services perhaps, but a lot of ebb and flow. In presenting his Table of English Social Services Newman is cautious: “We cannot classify social services in any concise, mutually exclusive or completely satisfactory form, partly because they are inter-dependent, and partly because each group of beneficiaries is not fixed or completely exclusive at any one time”. Below is Newman’s Table, much abbreviated. I have omitted “War emergency services”, which category has thankfully disappeared:
A. Public assistance for necessitous poor.
B. Fundamental community health services for all - with some seven sub-categories such as public health (sanitation, water supply), public medical services (maternity and infant welfare, nurseries and pre-schools, health centres, hospital services, dental clinics etc.), education, housing and town planning, “social recreative schemes”, industrial welfare, and “research for new knowledge and means of application”.
C. Social insurance (pensions, unemployment assistance, health insurance, workmen’s compensation).
D. National savings schemes.
E. General social services (libraries and museums, police, sports, communications and transport, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides).
Newman’s table surprises, not only in the wide range of government services that he chooses to categorise as “social” services, but in the fact that these were fully functioning in the England of 1941.
Looking for comparison I have dug, but not too deeply, into the categories and the depth of the situation in today’s Australia, namely a short perusal of the website of the Department of Social Services. The site has a page that lists “Our Responsibilities”. [These, notably, do not include either Health or Education – each sufficiently important to have been broken off from Social Services, and awarded departments of their own.] And those Social Services responsibilities in Australia are listed rather generally (in contrast to the specifics of the 1941 British list), as:
Communities and Vulnerable People
Disability and Carers
Families and Children
Housing Support
Mental Health
Seniors
Women’s Safety
Working Age
Welfare Reform.
We could spend hours trying to understand the relevance of the differences between the two nations, and the changes between the two eras - to little avail.
It is clear that Newman takes a high moral stance - the social services that the community should enjoy should be provided as service. “The services to be considered may best be conceived as those which are fundamental to primary human needs…….What does the natural body of man really require in order to live at the top of its whole physical capacity? What does the mind and spirit of the ordinary man need in order to win the happiness, power, and competency with which he is potentially gifted?” Echoes of Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516!
All very worthwhile, and enough said I should have thought, but Newman lays it on a bit thick with references to the life and doings of King Alfred. “He lived solely for the good of his people, the first instance in the history of Christendom of a ruler who put aside every personal aim or ambition in order to devote himself absolutely to the welfare of his people.”
Notwithstanding Alfred’s noble example, a thousand years passed before Newman is able to identify the birth of English social services with the Poor Law of 1601. Under this, for the first time in history, it became illegal to let anybody starve, and local parishes were obliged to give cash or food to those who could not afford to eat.
As already indicated, I shall forgo a more extensive analysis of the social services landscape either in England or Australia, or in 1941 or today. Instead, I pose the question: where, as a nation, would we be without social services? The simple conclusion: The ways in which, and the extent to which, a nation cares for its people is surely the mark of its degree of civilisation. Moreover, civilised nations, those already with extensive social services, should be ever alert to budgetary claims that the current social services can no longer be afforded. In this area, at least, head should not rule heart.
#117 The House of Commons by Martin Lindsay
Gallico was an American author (1897 to 1976), early a sports journalist, later a novelist and short story writer, many of the stories published in The Saturday Evening Post (1821 to date, although today much diminished as a bi-monthly). His works include four whimsical novels detailing the exploits of Mrs. Ada Harris, London charwoman – a woman of no formal education but of considerable wit and courage. The books are old fashioned exemplars of the triumph of the human spirit - to be avoided, however, if one is bent on shunning warm and fuzzy feelings.
In Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Parliament the heroine indeed does go to Parliament, winning a seat in the House of Commons. But her victory was not all it seemed, and nefarious forces had been at work; and Mrs. Harris was sadly out of place in the Commons, and grievously humiliated.
The point of this discursive preamble is to advise that before I started to read Martin Lindsay’s authoritative study of the House of Commons I had already been primed by listening to Paul Gallico’s colourful introduction to the House, Ada Harris version.
I have previously mentioned my admiration for the ability of the editors of the Britain in Pictures series to select authors appropriate to the subject topic, indeed authors both of relevance and eminence. Picking up The House of Commons I started with the bare name Martin Lindsay on the dust jacket, progressed to Martin Lindsay M.P. on the flyleaf, and landed in Wikipedia with Lieutenant Colonel Sir Martin Alexander Lindsay Bt., CBE, DSO (1905 to 1981). As a serving Member of Parliament Lindsay was well placed, in 1948, to write this survey. At the time he was, additionally, described as army officer, polar explorer, and author. Lindsay's Parliamentary years were unremarkable - for instance he never served in Cabinet - but he seems to have been a general all-round commentator, unafraid to speak out, something of a vocal burr under the saddle of the body politic. I realise that much of his political activity post-dated his authorship of The House of Commons, but can't resist referencing some of his lifetime of disparate pursuits. He was commissioned into the army after graduating from Sandhurst; he spent several stints in Arctic exploration, including as leader in 1934 of the British Trans-Greenland Expedition (and published about his exploits). Having left the army in 1936 he pursued a career in politics, without success. From the commencement of the World War he returned to the army, with his Arctic experiences fitting him for the Norwegian campaign. He successfully returned to politics, and entered Parliament in 1945. Lindsay’s post-War public life might be described as sporadic rather than consistent but, then, he had raised the bar high. He retired from Parliament in 1964.
And, in addition to all this, Lindsay knew the hiding place of sufficient bodies to be awarded a baronetcy in 1962.
As to the book itself: Lindsay’s essay is comprehensive, both as to the function and operations of the House, and as to its history as an institution. Here are some snippets:
#. “In England it is the House of Commons that is the guardian of the people’s liberties, which twenty generations of Commons men have helped to consolidate.”
#. In the seventh century a religious fraternity established a community on an island in the Thames, to which, some centuries later, Edward the Confessor added a new abbey – known as West-Minster, in acknowledgement of the (earlier version of the) already-standing St. Paul’s to the east. And Edward built himself a home nearby, the origin of the Palace of Westminster (today’s Houses of Parliament).
#. Westminster Hall, the largest (and oldest surviving) feature of the parliamentary complex, dates from 1099. The hammer-beam English oak ceiling was commissioned by Richard Second in 1393.
#. Trivia: When the ceiling had to be replaced in the 1920s because of the ravages of death-watch beetle the replacement oak was obtained from the same Sussex family estate where the earlier oak had been sourced some 600 years prior.
#. For centuries the Palace of Westminster was the principal residence of the monarch - it remained so until Henry Eighth moved out after the disastrous fire of 1512. It was convenient – convenient for the King - for the Parliament to meet close by.
#. Over the centuries the role of the Commons has evolved, and its power has increased. Early on, Councils of State comprised the King, chief officers of state, and the senior feudal and spiritual lords. Then, “in 1254, each county sheriff was bidden to send two knights to Parliament. This established a precedence of great constitutional importance. Firstly, because these representatives were to be chosen, not by the Crown, but by those whom they were to represent; and secondly, because they were summoned to consider what aid they would give to the King in his great necessity. Thus began the power to grant or withhold supplies, the lever which was subsequently used time and again by the representatives of the people in their efforts to control the activities of the King and his executive.”
#. Lindsay continues: “And it is this power of the House of Commons to withhold the revenue without which no government can govern for any length of time, which is still to this day our greatest safeguard against tyranny."
#17 English Education by Kenneth Lindsay
One of the study techniques from my schooling - schooling which was occurring not that long after Kenneth Lindsay was authoring this book in 1944 - was to get the sense of each paragraph from its first line……….and then to skip the remainder of the paragraph. So, I thought to apply this approach to the Introduction section of Lindsay’s little volume.
Here goes:
There can be little excuse for adding to the number of books on education. Oh dear! Never start with an apology for what you’re about to do.
The story of English education is a strangely neglected subject. A reasonable thesis, and in subsequent pages Lindsay elaborates: the State had become involved in education only in the previous 100 years; the Board of Education was a mere 40 years old; historically, schooling in England is essentially social rather than educational!
What is the object of education? Here Lindsay answers his own question with a conundrum: if, as Aristotle asserts, education “should enable a man to live well”, why does England allow organised education to cease for four-fifths of the population at age fourteen?
No easy description of a system of schooling can explain the British character. Lindsay rather misleads with this simple statement. At first sight, to me at least, it implies that the British character has somehow evolved (and coalesced) regardless of the particular system of schooling that individual citizens have experienced. Indeed, he implies worthwhile outcomes regardless of the nature of the child’s education. He elaborates with examples:
Case one: The growth of a child educated five days a week in a Grammar School is enhanced by “the essentials, the home and family circle, food, rest, holidays and social ties”.
Case two: Whereas, picture “a boy who returns from boarding school to a home rich in associations and sometimes in culture or to some small estate where he can roam at will, pursue his hobbies and hear talk of State and local affairs”.
Case three: And contrast “the home of a miner, a keen trade unionist or local preacher, and the rich background from which the son or daughter proceeds each day to the local school”.
To my mind Lindsay is unconvincing and fanciful. He is missing, I think, the opportunity to note that the educational system is far from egalitarian. He is failing to point out the divisive nature of the educational outcomes of economic advantage.
English schools have at their best a dual purpose. First, “they are miniature communities, symbolic of a better organized state and centres of resistance to the vulgar commercialism of their day”. [I do not understand this.] Second, “they prepare young people for the dignity of self-support”. Hence, domestic skills need no longer be learned under the eye of one’s mother – the school will do it; and technical skills are taught outside the venues of practical experience
And, remembering that this book was written after several years of ongoing war, and with concern for the pressing situation of Britain’s young people, there is this passionate outpouring: “To-day, owing partly to the revolutionary discoveries of modern science, partly to the spread of purely specialist training even in the Universities, partly to the repetitive nature of modern industry, and partly to the slow disintegration of old cultures, there has appeared a world-wide restlessness among youth. Hitler and Mussolini have tried to fill this vacuum by harnessing the energies and spirits of youth to strict, disciplined, national training and to the lure of the battlefield. The English faith is that there are other methods.”
The remainder of Lindsay’s study is a little tame after this. He traces the history of the growth of education, his assertion being that it started with King Alfred who translated the works of the Venerable Bede from Latin into Anglo-Saxon, and founded the first school to train the sons of noblemen for public service. Lindsay takes us through the growth of the universities and the grammar schools, and (for instance) the spurt in the learning of navigation and engineering triggered by the emergence of English sea-power in Elizabethan times. Lindsay’s subsequent story is complex but diverting, bringing his history to an epiphanic close at the introduction in 1918 of compulsory schooling to age fourteen. [The State of Victoria had compulsory free education to age fifteen, from 1872.]
From then the narrative loses its savour: he talks of recent developments, of local education, of nursery schools, of training for industry; and has much to say on the future of universities. His final words are testimony to the reality that “education” can never be static. He recounts that a report written 300 years prior, in Cromwell’s time, stated that: “They are eagerly debating on the reform of schools in the whole Kingdom, namely that all young people should be instructed, none neglected.” At that time, Lindsay notes, “Cromwell’s army was engaged in civil war; to-day [1944] the armies of freedom are engaged in an international civil war. In every country education is on trial; it is for teachers and parents alike to awaken to the challenge.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Gary Andrews
