von Bismarck, German Emperor William I introduced health, indus-
trial accident, and old age insurances in 1881, with the explicit objective
of undermining popular support for socialism. “The cure of social
ills,” he then explained to the Reichstag, “must not be sought exclusively
in the repression of Social Democrats, but simultaneously in the
positive advancement of the welfare of the working classes.”^41 Early
reforms were later implemented by Liberal-Labor coalitions and by
Catholic parties, but the major breakthrough came with the Great
Depression, when social programs definitively became associated with
the left. In the 1930s and 1940s, parties of the left and the center-left
introduced income security programs for the unemployed, the ill, and
the elderly in many countries of Europe and North America.^42 The
Second World War consolidated this evolution, and created the con-
ditions for a full-fledged welfare state.
The report on social insurance presented at the end of 1942 by
British civil servant William Beveridge constituted a landmark in this
respect. Originally intended as a technical inquiry on social insurance,
the report captured the public imagination, in Britain and also abroad,
by delineating the contours of a comprehensive and universal social
protection regime. After the war, advocated Beveridge, the British
state should attack “five giants on the road of reconstruction”: want,
disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. To do so, the government
should sustain full employment, provide family allowances, establish
a comprehensive health service, and, most importantly, design a
universal insurance system to protect all citizens from the main social
risks, from the cradle to the grave.^43 The scope and the universality of
Beveridge’s proposal responded perfectly to the dominant preoccu-
pations of the time. His report was discussed all over the world, and it
provided the conceptual foundations for what would become known
as the welfare state.
This vision of an inclusive world free of poverty was so powerful
and popular that all British political parties accepted its broad out-
lines. Important differences remained, however, over the meaning and
(^41) Emperor William I, quoted in Hicks,Social Democracy and Welfare
42 Capitalism, p. 43.
Hicks,Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism, p. 82.
(^43) Derek Fraser,The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social
Policy since the Industrial Revolution, third edition, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 235–38.
The age of universality (1945–1980) 119