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Disability and the Welfare State in Britain Changes
in Perception and Policy, 1948-1979
Jameel Hampton
Bristol:
Policy Press, 2016 Hardcover.
ix+277 p. ISBN 978-1447316428. £70
Reviewed by Robert
McRuer George
Washington University
In order to appreciate one of the main
strengths of Jameel Hampton’s Disability and the Welfare State in Britain:
Changes in Perception and Policy, 1948-79, it is useful to appreciate,
first, the extremely dire situation in which disabled people in Britain found
themselves before, during, and after the year of the book’s publication in
2016. The global pandemic of COVID-19 meant that 2020 was extremely difficult;
in fact, even though disabled people composed an estimated 16% of the
population, they accounted for 59% of the deaths from the disease.
As 2020 began, however, disabled people were already concluding one of the most
difficult decades in a century. Since 2010, they had been subject to one of the
most punishing austerity regimes in the world, initially put in place by a
coalition government headed by the Tory leader David Cameron and the Liberal
Democratic Leader Nick Clegg. In response to the global economic crisis of 2008
and the supposed “emergency” of over-spending and budget deficits, the
coalition government instituted massive cuts to social services. Disabled
people’s already-meager statutory benefits were shrunk, streamlined to a
universal payment, or eliminated altogether. They were subject to short and
often-degrading assessment tests, carried out by private contractors, measuring
their “fitness” for work (a fitness that would often make them ineligible for
benefits). Sanctions were imposed (and more benefits cut) if an assessment was
missed or if recipients could not provide evidence of a search for employment. A
notorious policy that came to be called the “bedroom tax” reduced benefits if
homes were deemed to have “excess” living space (usually one spare room). Throughout
the decade in which Hampton’s book appeared, the popular press, and by
extension the general public, increasingly stigmatized disabled people as
“scroungers” or “malingerers.” The coalition’s austerity regime impacted
innumerable nondisabled people as well, but in almost all areas of public life,
disabled people in the UK arguably felt the brunt of austerity cuts. Radical activist
groups such as Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) formed to counter what was
seen as a concerted attack on the rights and dignity of disabled people. To
many, what was happening during the decade was the culmination of almost four
decades of neoliberal capitalism, associated most famously with Margaret
Thatcher’s attack on worker’s rights, human rights, big government, the welfare
state, and indeed any notion of a collective “society,” which she famously
declared did not exist. Innumerable commentators have looked to Thatcherism and
the beginning of neoliberalism for the roots of the challenges disabled people
face in the twenty-first century.(1) And yet, Disability and the Welfare
State in Britain arguably provides a sharp check on a presentism that would
position disability oppression as primarily augmented by the Thatcherist dismantling
of the welfare state from 1979 forward. Although this is not actually its
stated purpose, the book’s main strength is its comprehensive overview of the
ways in which disability oppression was already rooted in the period
that preceded the rise of neoliberal capitalism, a period that is often
romanticized by critics of Thatcherism for its social solidarity and strong
government safety net. Disabled people, Hampton makes clear, were effectively excluded
from the welfare state from its inception for various reasons. And when they
finally emerged into the consciousness of politicians and the media in the
1960s and 1970s, largely because of concerted activism that Hampton details,
the gains that could be acknowledged in the 1970s were small and short-lived. Thatcherism
and neoliberal capitalism are thus only the latest chapter in a longer story of
disability oppression, neglect, and exclusion. Disability and the Welfare
State in Britain is thus history at its best in that it implicitly
challenges unchecked assumptions held in the present and encourages readers to
locate disability exclusion and resistance in a longer and much more
multi-faceted story. Hampton first quickly traces the
history of provisions for disability by the state and by non-state entities back
several centuries as he sets up his thick central chapters focused on the years
1948-79. The two key dates prior to the twentieth century are 1601, when the
Old Poor Law Act was established, giving local parishes responsibility for
assisting those in need, and 1834, when the Poor Law Amendment Act was
established, focused more on the institutionalization of disabled people and on
efforts to determine that their need was “genuine.” This nineteenth-century
moment helped to codify a cultural distinction between “deserving” and
“non-deserving” poor that persists in various ways into the twentieth and
twenty-first century. Also culturally codified from the nineteenth century
forward was a suspicion that certain people might be taking advantage of the
system. Hampton then shows how the period
leading up to the establishment of the welfare state inaugurated a will to
eliminate some of the great evils of society, including poverty and want. Although
there are many ways in which it would seem counter-intuitive that disabled
people would not be part of this initiative, Hampton surveys several reasons
why they were essentially excluded from the post-World War II settlement; that
is, during the period stretching from 1948-67. First, a cultural belief in a
“contributory principle” existed that connected insurance and statutory
benefits to a citizen’s (or, really, worker’s) contribution to the greater
whole. This was correlated with the fact that, regardless of how groundbreaking
or generous the welfare state might be understood to have been, it was
nonetheless part of a work-based system, a system that by definition excluded
many disabled people. Second, especially early on in the establishment of the
welfare state, there was a lingering sense that disabled people should be
provided for in non-statutory, charitable, ways (arguably a holdover from the Poor
Laws of previous centuries). Third, and connected to the contributory
principle, a division between “deserving” and “non-deserving” was evident
during the initial post-war period in the fact that certain groups did receive
attention and some statutory assistance; namely, disabled veterans and those
who had been injured on the job. Finally, the initial welfare state had a
strong universalist bent that discouraged (and arguably stigmatized) particular
groups, such as disabled people, in need of aid or benefits. As in many other periods (and sites)
of disability history, activism begins to change this during the late 1960s and
heading into the 1970s. Another strength of Hampton’s book is thus its solid and
groundbreaking overview of the group Disablement Income Group (DIG), founded in
1965 by Megan du Boisson. No other thorough history of DIG exists. Hampton
rightfully credits DIG with bringing disability to the consciousness of
politicians and the public in the 1960s; as their name suggests, their goal was
to secure policy changes that would guarantee an income for disabled people in
particular and regardless of any past contribution to the state or economy. Initially,
DIG focused on a group self-identifying as “disabled housewives,” but the scope
of their work expanded over time. DIG can be credited with significant
successes. Their advocacy surely nurtured the Chronically Sick and Disabled
Persons Act (CSDP) of 1970, and as the decade began, they had secured something
of a cross-party consensus that a guaranteed statutory income was indeed
important for disabled people. Even during the economic crises of the 1970s,
DIG managed to secure allies in both the Conservative and Labour parties. Still,
the CSDP largely failed to provide tangible benefits, and Hampton argues that
the view of disabled people as scroungers solidified in its wake. Most
importantly, on a more intangible cultural level, the CSDP “did not create
lasting respect, dignity and acceptance” [216]. The DIG’s narrow focus on a
universal income also at times limited the risks the group was willing to take.
More radical groups like the Union of the Physically Impaired against
Segregation (UPIAS), a group Hampton largely locates in footnotes, had a more
expansive vision of cultural change and integration. Indeed, more on UPIAS
would have been welcome, as UPIAS’s argument for what came to be called the
social model of disability marks the group as a precursor to late twentieth and
early twenty-first century critical disability studies. The transformed
consciousness put forward by UPIAS is arguably a condition of possibility for
studies like Disability and the Welfare State in Britain. It is ironic, perhaps, that the word
capitalism appears very rarely in Hampton’s study, as—again—one of the main
strengths of the books is that it allows perceptive readers to see various
moments within the history of capitalism, not just neoliberalism, as
oppressive for disabled people. If on a macroeconomic level, the mid-twentieth
century is associated with mass production and consumption, on a microlevel,
the level of everyday life, it was an era of uniformity and normalization
(codified, as Hampton implicitly demonstrates, in the universalist thinking of
the welfare state). Normalization and uniformity, as disability studies has
long shown, are invariably oppressive to disabled people.(2) It is important to keep in mind (and
Hampton’s book makes this quite clear even if it does not state it explicitly)
that the welfare state was a reformist compromise within capitalism, not a
revolutionary transformation. Indeed, the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
make that crystal clear, on the other side of the Atlantic (ironically, given
Roosevelt’s own disability). In a meeting with capitalist leaders to justify
the much weaker welfare state-light reforms in the United States, Roosevelt
asserted, I was convinced we’d have a revolution in
[the] US and I decided to be a leader and prevent it. I’m a rich man too and
have run with your kind of people. I decided half a loaf was better than none—a
half loaf for me and a half loaf for you and no revolution.(3) Cynicism like Roosevelt’s is not
immediately obvious in Hampton’s study of Britain, but the larger point remains
that the welfare state in both locations was a compromise within the history of
capitalism. Neoliberal capitalism has been so bad for disabled people that it is
possible to forget that capitalism in general has been, consistently,
oppressive. Hampton’s detailed study, even if inadvertently, makes that point
clearly. Another minor strength of Hampton’s
book could be seen as a cultural studies strength. The book is not simply a dry
history of policy changes (although it is often that); it also at times makes
clear that struggles occur within language and representation. The
clearest example of this is in Hampton’s overview of the moment when children
whose mothers had been prescribed thalidomide mid-century burst onto public
consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This occurred within the media
and generated a widespread sense that something needed to be done to provide
for these children. DIG, interestingly, did not take advantage of this moment
of public outrage, because they were wary of pushing Conservative and Labour
allies too far and too quickly. But Hampton’s overview demonstrates that change
happens in complex and at times contradictory ways. Hampton does not fully draw
out the contradictions; indeed, he himself repeats without commentary the language
of “tragedy” and “victim” [163, 165] that later disability activists would
repudiate (including UK artists and activists impacted by thalidomide, such as
Mary Duffy or Mat Fraser). Hampton’s overview of the moment, however, provides
a provocative example of how and why representation, even compromised representation,
matters and how it works. There are other moments when Hampton’s
language can be criticized; contemporary disability acvitists and scholars
would never describe a wheelchair user, for instance, as “wheelchair-bound”
[155]. Nonetheless, Disability and The Welfare State in Britain is a
vitally important history that arguably allows for the most textured
understanding of how disabled people were understood in shifting ways during
the consolidation of the British welfare state. Reading backwards from 2020,
when the challenges of COVID-19 and a decade of austerity might lead readers to
forget or minimize the extreme challenges of earlier eras, Hampton’s study is
indispensable. _ (1) For more on these challenges, see
Robert McRuer, Crip Times : Disability, Globalization, and Resistance.
New York: NYU Press, 2018. (2) The work of Kevin Floyd is
particularly useful for thinking about the relationship between macroeconomic
processes and quotidian, microlevel practices. Kevin Floyd, The Reification
of Desire : Toward a Queer Marxism. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2009. (3) Quoted in Neil Smith, The
Endgame of Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2005 : 86.
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