Titmuss’s work runs to over 500 pages, plus appendices. On one level it is a detailed analysis of particular areas of experience, and of health and social service provision. The volume remains indispensable to those working on civilian life and official policy during the Second World War. Structurally, it adopted for the most part a chronological approach, starting with the build-up to war. Then comes the era of ‘The Invisible War’, whose main characteristic was the first wave of evacuation of children from areas threatened by aerial attack. This is followed by a section on the impact of aerial bombing when it actually arrived, including an important discussion of civilian mental health. This had been of concern before 1939, particularly to psychiatrists and government officials who had feared a collapse in morale. But Titmuss demonstrated that these fears had not been realised. The next part deals with ‘The Long Years’ following the Blitz. It describes both the second wave of evacuation, and hospital care for the civilian casualties of war as well as for those who needed such treatment for ‘normal’ reasons. Throughout the book, Titmuss was not unwilling to criticise local authorities and voluntary agencies. Nonetheless, such bodies had often learned from experience, and adapted positively. Eleven statistical appendices follow the main text. Later, however, the focus is not on the data Titmuss gathered and analysed, monumental task though this was, or on issues such as the mechanics of evacuation, or the workings of the administrative machine. Rather, we examine the conclusions Titmuss drew from the civilian experience of war. This comes in the last chapter, challengingly entitled ‘Unfinished Business’.
First, though, we briefly consider Titmuss’s methodological approach. He noted the huge volume of material available to him, official and unofficial, within which lay ‘the essential facts for a history of the social services during the Second World War’. The historian therefore had to untangle changes in policy on a case-specific basis before assessing ‘the results achieved’. The outcome would thus be a ‘social history’ (not, it is worth remarking, a generally recognised branch of historical study at this time). But writing such a work was difficult, especially when the author was ‘so close to events’. A further problem was generalising at the expense of ‘concreteness’. He had, therefore, selected problems for ‘exact investigation’, using the method of ‘selective illustration’. Titmuss then outlined the book’s structure, noting that in its final part the ‘dominant theme’ was the strain of war on family life because the ‘needs that arose challenged the existing character of social service, shifted the emphasis in policy, and called into play new instruments of welfare’.38 It is worth digressing here to consider Tawney’s 1932 inaugural lecture at the LSE. Here he argued that history was concerned with ‘the life of society, and with the records of the past as a means to that end’. There was, then, some truth in ‘the paradox that all history is the history of the present’. Strikingly, Tawney also suggested that societies changed not simply because of economic factors, but through a range of interconnected causes, with the ‘most neglected factor in social development’ being war.39 We do not know whether Titmuss was aware of this lecture, and, of course, he drew much of his analysis from his own experiences. Nonetheless, his approach and conclusions do, in the light of Tawney’s views, suggest his mentor’s influence. So what of Titmuss’s ‘dominant theme’ and ‘unfinished business’?
By 1945 the state had ‘assumed and developed a measure of direct concern for the health and well-being of the population’, a change which, when contrasted with the 1930s, was ‘little short of remarkable’. This had been achieved through both new and existing services, embracing all social classes. National resources were pooled and risks shared, and acceptance ‘of these principles moved forward the goals of welfare’. Titmuss acknowledged that little of this was planned in advance, but insisted that, for instance, ‘the condition of evacuated mothers and children aroused the conscience of the nation’, which led directly to proposals for reform, leading in turn to state action. To take another example, the expansion of state-provided school meals, previously a poorly regarded scheme, generated something ‘very close to a revolution in the attitude of parents, teachers and children’. From a service with a Poor Law taint, it had become ‘a social service, fused into school life, and making its own contribution to the physical nurture of the children and to their social education’. Further positive attitudinal change could be found in the ‘quality of the Assistance Board’s work, and in the relationship between its officers and its clients’, another contrast to the 1930s. Here Titmuss was referring to the Unemployment Assistance Board, set up in 1934, the cause of much resentment among the unemployed because of its intrusive methods of assessing benefit. Analysing an indicator of social wellbeing in which he had a longstanding interest, Titmuss recorded a wartime fall in the infant mortality rate which would have been ‘considered as a remarkable achievement in peace time’. Indeed, the data showed not just a decline, but one historically almost unprecedented. Reviewing the population’s health more generally, government action after 1939 to ‘safeguard the nation’s health’ had been ‘far more effective than anyone expected or thought feasible’ before that date. But what Titmuss was especially keen to emphasise was a change in values early in the conflict when invasion threatened, followed by the bombing of major urban areas. If ‘dangers were to be shared, then resources should also be shared’. So commonality of purpose meant benefits in common, but also obligations on the part of individuals, one to another – ‘Dunkirk, and all that name evokes, was an important event in the war-time history of the social services’. The subsequent difficult years ‘served only to reinforce the war-warmed impulse of people for a more generous society’.40
It should be stressed that Titmuss was neither naïve, nor an unthinking optimist, anxious only to show the British at their best. He recognised that, even with the improvements which had been made, certain social problems still had to be addressed – hence the ‘Unfinished Business’. It is therefore important to remember that the book was published in 1950, by which time the key measures of the ‘welfare state’ were in place. We do not know precisely when Titmuss wrote this chapter, but it seems likely that he was already looking forward to what social policy might achieve. What we do get, though, is the very strong sense that the war had brought about a fundamental change, especially in social values. The clear message of this chapter, and it is different in tone from the statistically dense other parts of the book, was that people working together, with duties as well as rights, can, within a framework of beneficent state action, build a better society – the new Jerusalem promised by Labour leader Clement Attlee during his successful 1945 election campaign.
In August 1944, Titmuss told Lady Allen of Hurtwood (Marjory Allen) that any history of the wartime social services would be incomplete ‘without reference to the work of the voluntary organisations operating in this field’. He was, therefore, seeking information from Allen in her capacity as Chair of the Nursery School Association, a body which campaigned for expanded pre-school educational provision. A meeting was duly arranged for late September.41 Although their early correspondence is formal, it seems likely that Titmuss and Allen already knew each other. Both moved in ‘progressive’ political circles. Allen’s husband, for instance, had founded the ‘Next Five Years Group’, a body committed to social and economic reform, especially active in the mid-1930s.42 In any event, they built up a working relationship in which Allen sought Titmuss’s advice, while he made a number of revealing comments about the current state of welfare provision, and thereby his own approach to the social services.
Shortly before their meeting, Allen wrote to The Times on ‘Children in “Homes”: Wards of State or Charity’. She raised