Introduction

Whereas Part One of the book was concerned with Joseph and the cycle speech, Part Two explores the origins and direction of the Transmitted Deprivation Research Programme. One of the problems with the existing secondary literature is that very little is known about the period between the cycle speech (June 1972) and the launch of the Research Programme (May 1974). In his useful (1983a) article, Richard Berthoud, for example, moves quickly from the content of the speech itself, to the setting up of the Joint Working Party. He acknowledges the importance and impact of the literature review by Michael Rutter and Nicola Madge (1976). Nevertheless, his focus is on the Joint Working Party's First Report (August 1974). Berthoud argues, for instance, that this failed to mention what the issue was; the focus was on ‘intergenerational continuities’, but while the Report acknowledged that the term ‘deprivation’ was ambiguous and controversial, it assumed that everybody knew what it meant. Thus while the Report placed less emphasis on personal inadequacy, it allowed economic disadvantage, ‘social handicap’ n, moral deviance, and psychiatric difficulties to be covered by the same term, implying that they were various symptoms of a common condition. While the aim of the Research Programme was to answer a question of detail (intergenerational continuities), it failed to identify the fundamental question of the relationship between individual behaviour and the power of social institutions. Berthoud writes that ‘by failing to define deprivation, the Working Party allowed researchers working on the Programme to interpret it as they liked, but also permitted a strong assumption in favour of the equation of poverty with personal inadequacy’ (Berthoud, 1983a, p 156).

How the Joint Working Party arrived at this point is the subject of this chapter. It surveys the setting up of the Research Programme, from the first discussions between the DHSS and SSRC in the summer of 1971, to the publication of the First Report by the Joint Working Party in August 1974. It explores the informal discussions between the DHSS and SSRC that took place in advance of the cycle speech, the first formal meetings of the Joint Working Party, and the composition of its membership.