This book has been framed by two speeches: the Joseph cycle speech in June 1972, and the Blair social exclusion speech in September 2006. The year 2006 also marked the 30th anniversary of the publication of Rutter and Madge's literature review (Rutter and Madge, 1976). The question is what links them, and what changes and continuities there have been over that 34-year period. This conclusion summarises five areas in which this intellectual history of the cycle speech and Research Programme has added significantly to existing knowledge. As we have seen, interest in the cycle speech and Research Programme has derived from one of the following perspectives: the career of Keith Joseph himself; an interest in the history of underclass stereotypes; research on approaches to poverty, including individualist or behavioural explanations; and arguments around the alleged neglect of agency in postwar social policy. Nevertheless, for the most part, these writers have focused on published sources, most obviously the two best-known products of the Research Programme: Rutter and Madge's literature review (1976) and Brown and Madge's final report (1982).

This book has been underpinned by a historical approach. The main sources available to the historian are the archival materials in the National Archives at Kew; the private papers of Keith Joseph himself and other significant actors; oral interviews with former civil servants and social scientists; published reports including the comparatively well-known Heinemann series; a range of other published documents including those by the SSRC; and contemporary newspapers, periodicals, and academic journals. A historical perspective throws up new and interesting questions, and it is these that this book has explored. First, what were the influences on Keith Joseph himself, in terms of both his own personal history, and the wider policy context, that help to explain the timing and content of the cycle speech? Second, how was the Research Programme set up, and why did it take the direction it did? Third, what was the attitude of the DHSS to the Research Programme, and how did this change as it developed? Fourth, what was the response of social scientists to the cycle hypothesis, and why did many social policy pundits take a deterministic position, which highlighted the relative importance of structural factors, and either ignored or downplayed the significance of behavioural, cultural, or personal characteristics?