William Beveridge Life and career What is an example of a job that William Beveridge held early in his career? After leaving university, Beveridge initially became a lawyer. Where did he work as a lawyer? worked at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London. What year did he work at Toynbee Hall? 1903 Do we know what he worked on while at Toynbee hall? becoming active in promoting old age pensions, free school meals, and campaigning for a national system of labour exchanges. Where else did Beveridge work? In 1919 he left the civil service to become director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
What did he work on at the London School of Economics and Political Science?
What did  Beveridge work on at the London School of Economics and Political Science?
After leaving university, Beveridge initially became a lawyer. He became interested in the social services and wrote about the subject for the Morning Post newspaper. His interest in the causes of unemployment began in 1903 when he worked at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London. There he worked closely with Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and was influenced by their theories of social reform, becoming active in promoting old age pensions, free school meals, and campaigning for a national system of labour exchanges.  In 1908, now considered to be the United Kingdom's leading authority on unemployment insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb to Winston Churchill, who had recently been promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Churchill invited Beveridge to join the Board of Trade, and he organised the implementation of the national system of labour exchanges and National Insurance to combat unemployment and poverty. During the First World War he was involved in mobilising and controlling manpower. After the war, he was knighted and made permanent secretary to the Ministry of Food.  In 1919 he left the civil service to become director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over the next few years he served on several commissions and committees on social policy. He was so highly influenced by the Fabian Society socialists - in particular by Beatrice Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909 Poor Laws report - that he could readily be considered one of their number. He published academic economic works including his early work on unemployment (1909) and a large historical study of prices and wages (1939). The Fabians made him a director of the LSE in 1919, a post he retained until 1937. During his time as Director, he jousted with Edwin Cannan and Lionel Robbins, who were trying to steer the LSE away from its Fabian roots.  In 1933 he helped set up the Academic Assistance Council. This helped prominent academics who had been dismissed from their posts on grounds of race, religion or political position to escape Nazi persecution. In 1937, Beveridge was appointed Master of University College, Oxford. CANNOTANSWER
he served on several commissions and committees on social policy.
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge,  (5 March 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist and Liberal politician who was a progressive and social reformer who played a central role in designing the British welfare state. His 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services (known as the Beveridge Report) served as the basis for the welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected in 1945. 
 
He built his career as an expert on unemployment insurance. He served on the Board of Trade as Director of the newly created labour exchanges, and later as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Food. He was Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1919 until 1937, when he was elected Master of University College, Oxford.

Beveridge published widely on unemployment and social security, his most notable works being: Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909), Planning Under Socialism (1936), Full Employment in a Free Society (1944), Pillars of Security (1943), Power and Influence (1953) and A Defence of Free Learning (1959). He was elected in a 1944 by-election as a Liberal MP (for Berwick-upon-Tweed); following his defeat in the 1945 general election, he was elevated to the House of Lords where he served as the leader of the Liberal peers.

Early life and education

Beveridge, the eldest son of Henry Beveridge, an Indian Civil Service officer and District Judge, and scholar Annette Ackroyd, was born in Rangpur, British India (now Rangpur, Bangladesh), on 5 March 1879.

Beveridge's mother had, with Elizabeth Malleson, founded the Working Women's College in Queen Square, London in 1864. She met and married Henry Beveridge in Calcutta where she had gone in 1873 to open a school for Indian girls. William Beveridge was educated at Charterhouse, a leading public school near the market town of Godalming in Surrey, followed by Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he studied Mathematics and Classics, obtaining a first class degree in both. He later studied law.

While Beveridge's mother had been a member of the Stourbridge Unitarian community, his father was an early humanist and positivist activist and "an ardent disciple" of the French philosopher Auguste Comte. Comte's ideas of a secular religion of humanity were a prominent influence in the household and would exert a lasting influence on Beveridge's thinking. Beveridge himself became a "materialist agnostic", in his words.

Life and career

After leaving university, Beveridge initially became a lawyer. He became interested in the social services and wrote about the subject for the Morning Post newspaper. His interest in the causes of unemployment began in 1903 when he worked at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London. There he worked closely with Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and was influenced by their theories of social reform, becoming active in promoting old age pensions, free school meals, and campaigning for a national system of labour exchanges.

In 1908, now considered to be Britain's leading authority on unemployment insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb to Winston Churchill, who had recently been promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. Churchill invited Beveridge to join the Board of Trade, and he organised the implementation of the national system of labour exchanges and National Insurance to combat unemployment and poverty. During the First World War he was involved in mobilising and controlling manpower. After the war, he was knighted and made permanent secretary to the Ministry of Food.

In 1919 he left the civil service to become director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over the next few years he served on several commissions and committees on social policy. He was so highly influenced by the Fabian Society socialists – in particular by Beatrice Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909 Poor Laws report – that he could be considered one of their number. He published academic economic works including his early work on unemployment (1909).  The Fabians made him a director of the LSE in 1919, a post he retained until 1937. During his time as Director, he jousted with Edwin Cannan and Lionel Robbins, who were trying to steer the LSE away from its Fabian roots. From 1929 he led the International scientific committee on price history, contributing a large historical study, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century (1939).

In 1933 he helped set up the Academic Assistance Council. This helped prominent academics who had been dismissed from their posts on grounds of race, religion or political position to escape Nazi persecution. In 1937 Beveridge was appointed Master of University College, Oxford.

Wartime work

Three years later, Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in the wartime National government, invited Beveridge to take charge of the Welfare department of his Ministry. Beveridge refused, but declared an interest in organising British manpower in wartime (Beveridge had come to favour a strong system of centralised planning). Bevin was reluctant to let Beveridge have his way but did commission him to work on a relatively unimportant manpower survey from June 1940 and so Beveridge became a temporary civil servant. Neither Bevin nor the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry Sir Thomas Phillips liked working with Beveridge as both found him conceited.

His work on manpower culminated in his chairmanship of the Committee on Skilled Men in the Services which reported to the War Cabinet in August and October 1941. Two recommendations of the committee were implemented: Army recruits were enlisted for their first six weeks into the General Service Corps, so that their subsequent posting could take account of their skills and the Army's needs; and the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers was created.

Report on social insurance and views on full employment
An opportunity for Bevin to ease Beveridge out presented itself in May 1941 when Minister of Health Ernest Brown announced the formation of a committee of officials to survey existing social insurance and allied services, and to make recommendations. Although Brown had made the announcement, the inquiry had largely been urged by Minister without Portfolio Arthur Greenwood, and Bevin suggested to Greenwood making Beveridge chairman of the committee. Beveridge, at first uninterested and seeing the committee as a distraction from his work on manpower, accepted only reluctantly.

The report to Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services was published in November 1942. It proposed that all people of working age should pay a weekly national insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. Beveridge argued that this system would provide a minimum standard of living "below which no one should be allowed to fall". It recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the "five giants on the road of reconstruction" of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Beveridge included as one of three fundamental assumptions the fact that there would be a National Health Service of some sort, a policy already being worked on in the Ministry of Health.

Beveridge's arguments were widely accepted. He appealed to conservatives and other sceptics by arguing that welfare institutions would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions out of corporate ledgers and onto the public account but also by producing healthier, wealthier and thus more motivated and productive workers who would also serve as a great source of demand for British goods.

Beveridge saw full employment (defined as unemployment of no more than 3%) as the pivot of the social welfare programme he expressed in the 1942 report. Full Employment in a Free Society, written in 1944 expressed the view that it was "absurd" to "look to individual employers for maintenance of demand and full employment." These things must be "undertaken by the State under the supervision and pressure of democracy." Measures for achieving full-employment might include Keynesian-style fiscal regulation, direct control of manpower, and state control of the means of production. The impetus behind Beveridge's thinking was social justice, and the creation of an ideal new society after the war. He believed that the discovery of objective socio-economic laws could solve the problems of society.

Later career

Later in 1944, Beveridge, who had recently joined the Liberal Party, was elected to the House of Commons in a by-election to succeed George Charles Grey, who had died on the battlefield in Normandy, France, on the first day of Operation Bluecoat on 30 July 1944. Beveridge briefly served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed, during which time he was prominent in the Radical Action group, which called for the party to withdraw from the war-time electoral pact and adopt more radical policies. However, he lost his seat at the 1945 general election, when he was defeated by the Conservative candidate, Robert Thorp, by a majority of 1,962 votes.

Clement Attlee and the Labour Party defeated Winston Churchill's Conservative Party in that election and the new Labour Government began the process of implementing Beveridge's proposals that provided the basis of the modern Welfare State.  Attlee announced he would introduce the Welfare State outlined in the 1942 Beveridge Report. This included the establishment of a National Health Service in 1948 with taxpayer funded medical treatment for all. A national system of benefits was also introduced to provide "social security" so that the population would be protected from the "cradle to the grave". The new system was partly built upon the National Insurance scheme set up by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1911.

In 1946, Beveridge was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Beveridge, of Tuggal in the County of Northumberland, and eventually became leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords. He was the author of Power and Influence (1953). He was the President of the charity Attend (then the National Association of Leagues of Hospital Friends) from 1952 to 1962.

Eugenics
Beveridge was a member of the Eugenics Society, which promoted the study of methods to 'improve' the human race by controlling reproduction. In 1909, he proposed that men who could not work should be supported by the state "but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood." Whilst director of the London School of Economics, Beveridge attempted to create a Department of Social Biology. Though never fully established, Lancelot Hogben, a fierce anti-eugenicist, was named its chair. Former LSE director John Ashworth speculated that discord between those in favour and those against the serious study of eugenics led to Beveridge's departure from the school in 1937.

In the 1940s, Beveridge credited the Eugenics Society with promoting the children's allowance, which was incorporated into his 1942 report. However, whilst he held views in support of eugenics, he did not believe the report had any overall "eugenic value". Professor Danny Dorling said that "there is not even the faintest hint" of eugenic thought in the report.

Dennis Sewell states that "On the day the House of Commons met to debate the Beveridge Report in 1943, its author slipped out of the gallery early in the evening to address a meeting of the Eugenics Society at the Mansion House.  ...  His report he was keen to reassure them, was eugenic in intent and would prove so in effect.  ...  The idea of child allowances had been developed within the society with the twin aims of encouraging the educated professional classes to have more children than they currently did and, at the same time, to limit the number of children born to poor households.  For both effects to be properly stimulated, the allowance needed to be graded: middle-class parents receiving more generous payments than working-class parents.  ...  The Home Secretary had that very day signalled that the government planned a flat rate of child allowance. But Beveridge, alluding to the problem of an overall declining birth rate, argued that even the flat rate would be eugenic. Nevertheless, he held out hope for the purists."  'Sir William made it clear that it was in his view not only possible but desirable that  graded family allowance schemes, applicable to families in the higher income brackets, be administered concurrently with his flat rate scheme,' reported the Eugenics Review.

Personal life

Beveridge married the mathematician Janet Philip, daughter of William Philip and widow of David Mair, in 1942. They had worked together in the civil service and at LSE, and she was instrumental in the drafting and publicising of the Beveridge Report.

He died at his home on 16 March 1963, aged 84, and was buried in Thockrington churchyard, on the Northumbrian moors. His barony became extinct upon his death. His last words were "I have a thousand things to do".

Commemoration
Beveridge Street in the Christchurch Central City was named for William Beveridge. It was one of 120 streets that were renamed in 1948 by Peter Fraser's Labour Government of New Zealand.

In November 2018, English Heritage unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Beveridge at 27 Bedford Gardens in Campden Hill, London W8 7EF where he lived from 1914 until 1921.

University College, Oxford's society for students studying and tutors involved in the study of Philosophy, Politics and Economics was recently renamed the Beveridge Society in his honour.

Works
 Unemployment: A problem of industry, 1909. online (Archive.org)
 'Wages in the Winchester Manors', Economic History Review, Vol. VII, 1936–37. 
 Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century, 1939.
 Social Insurance and Allied Services, 1942. (The Beveridge Report)
 The Pillars of Security and Other War-Time Essays and Addresses, 1943, republished 2014.
 Full Employment in a Free Society, 1944.
 The Economics of Full Employment, 1944.
 Why I am a Liberal, 1945.
 The Price of Peace, 1945.
 Power and Influence, 1953.
 "India Called Them," George Allen & Unwin, 1947
 Plan for Britain: A Collection of Essays prepared for the Fabian Society by G. D. H. Cole, Aneurin Bevan, Jim Griffiths, L. F. Easterbrook, Sir William Beveridge, and Harold J. Laski (Not illustrated with 127 text pages).
 'Westminster Wages in the Manorial Era', Economic History Review, 2nd Series, Vol. VIII, 1955.

See also
 Aneurin Bevan, Clement Attlee's Health Minister
 Beveridge curve – the relationship between unemployment and the job vacancy rate
List of liberal theorists
 List of British university chancellors and vice-chancellors
 List of United Kingdom MPs with the shortest service
 List of Vice-Chancellors of the University of London

Resources
 Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1997. .
 Julien Demade, Produire un fait scientifique. Beveridge et le Comité international d'histoire des prix, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2018. .
 William Beveridge's archives are held at the London School of Economics.
 Photographs of William Beveridge held by LSE Archives
 Donald Markwell, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace, Oxford University Press, 2006.

References

Further reading
 Addison, Paul. The Road To 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1977) pp  211–28.
 Harris, Jose. William Beveridge: a biography (1997) online.
 Hills, John et al. eds. Beveridge and Social Security: an International Retrospective (1994)
 Robertson, David Brian. "Policy entrepreneurs and policy divergence: John R. Commons and William Beveridge." Social Service Review 62.3 (1988): 504–531.
 Sugita, Yoneyuki. "The Beveridge Report and Japan." Social work in public health 29.2 (2014): 148–161.
 Whiteside, Noel. "The Beveridge Report and its implementation: A revolutionary project?." Histoire@ Politique 3 (2014): 24–37. online

Primary sources
 Williams, Ioan, and Karel Williams, eds. A Beveridge Reader (2014); (Works of William H. Beveridge).

External links 

 
 Sir William Beveridge Foundation
 Spartacus Educational on William Beveridge and The Beveridge Report
 Full text of the report
 BBC information
 BBC Radio 4, Great Lives – Downloadable 30 minute discussion of William Beveridge
 Catalogue of William Beveridge's papers at the London School of Economics (LSE Archives)
 Cataloguing the Beveridge papers at LSE Archives

 

1879 births
1963 deaths
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
Alumni of University College, Oxford
Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
British agnostics
British humanists
British economists
British reformers
British social liberals
Civil servants in the Board of Trade
English people of Scottish descent
Knights Commander of the Order of the Bath
Liberal Party (UK) hereditary peers
Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
Masters of University College, Oxford
People educated at Charterhouse School
People associated with the London School of Economics
Permanent Secretaries of the Ministry of Food
Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society
British social reformers
UK MPs 1935–1945
UK MPs who were granted peerages
Vice-Chancellors of the University of London
Peers created by George VI
Richard Bradley (born 13 December 1964) is a South African philosopher. He is a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, a project leader at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, and the former editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy.

Bradley is best known for work on decision theory, formal epistemology, semantics, and climate change policy. His PhD thesis began his work on decisions involving conditional attitudes, which culminates in his 2017 book Decision Theory with a Human Face.

Biography
Bradley attended the University of Witwatersrand studying economics, politics and sociology. He holds an MSc in Social Philosophy from the LSE and completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago, under the supervision of Richard Jeffrey and David Malament.

Selected publications

References 

Academics of the London School of Economics
South African philosophers
1964 births
Living people Simon Hix is a British political scientist, holder of the Stein Rokkan chair in comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence. He was also Harold Laski Professor of Political Science and pro-director for research at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Hix is an expert in European Union politics, and the author of several books, including What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament with Abdul Noury and Gérard Roland, and The Political System of the European Union. He is also associate editor of the international peer-reviewed European Union Politics, and founder and chairman of VoteWatch Europe, an influential online EU affairs think-tank founded in London in 2009 that combines big data with political insight. After a first degree and a master's from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Simon Hix obtained a PhD in Political and Social Science at the European University Institute in Florence in 1995, and lectured in European Politics at Brunel University 1996–97, before joining the LSE in 1997. In this university he was promoted to professor in 2004, and served also as head of its department of government (2012-2015), academic director of its school of public policy (2017-2019), and pro-director for research from 2019. He finally was appointed Stein Rokkan chair of comparative politics at the European University Institute in Florence in 2021. His main areas of research are voting in parliaments, democratic institutions, and EU politics.

Distinctions
Simon Hix was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011. In 2015 he was named the inaugural Harold Laski Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Later that year he was awarded a degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest. In 2021 he was appointed Stein Rokkan Chair in comparative politics at the European University Institute.

Publications
Political Parties in the European Union (1997), with Christopher Lord, London: Macmillan.
The Political System of the European Union (1999), London: Palgrave.
Götz, Klaus H.; Hix, Simon, eds. (2001). Europeanised Politics? : European Integration and National Political Systems. Frank Cass. . .
Hix, Simon; Raunio, Tapio; Scully, Roger (2003). "Fifty Years on: Research on the European Parliament". JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies. Blackwell Science Ltd. 41 (2): 191–202. . ISSN 0021-9886 – via John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hix, Simon; Høyland, Bjørn (2005). The Political System of the European Union. The European Union Series (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. . .
Hix, Simon; Noury, Abdul G.; Gérard, Roland (2007). Democratic Politics in the European Parliament. Cambridge University Press. . .
Hix, Simon (2013) [First published in 2008]. What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It. John Wiley & Sons. . .
Hix, Simon; Høyland, Bjørn (2011). The Political System of the European Union. The European Union Series (3rd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. . .

References

Academics of the London School of Economics
Fellows of the British Academy
Living people
British political scientists
Place of birth missing (living people)
European Union and European integration scholars
European University Institute alumni
European University Institute faculty
Alumni of the London School of Economics
1968 births