Introduction

Titmuss's working life was always a balance between what were, for him, the principal functions of higher education – teaching students and conducting and disseminating research – and engagement with the policy process. In his view, though, these activities were complementary, rather than existing in watertight containers. This chapter examines, first, the reception of his second collection of essays, Commitment to Welfare. Although based on existing writings, and subject to academic criticism, this book also had an explicitly educational function. Titmuss's detailed, practical, contributions to the Finer Committee on One Parent Families is then described. This work was challenging and complex, raising a number of important questions about the aims and delivery of social services.

Commitment to Welfare

Commitment to Welfare was published in 1968, in both Britain and the US. The American edition's front cover posed two of the questions Titmuss had addressed: ‘What can be done about the fundamental inequities of our society?’ and ‘How can our social policies benefit all sections the population rather than increase the power of the few?’ The volume consisted of 21 pieces, and the essays, or the lectures from which they derived, are discussed at appropriate points in this volume. So here we examine why Titmuss brought out this collection, and the reaction to it. As he explained, while most of the pieces had been published, some were not easily available. Consequently, students had difficulty in locating them, while Titmuss's secretary, the redoubtable Angela Vivian, was ‘sometimes over-strained by the flow of requests for offprints, typewritten copies and the like’. Titmuss's publisher at George Allen and Unwin, Charles Furth, had also employed his ‘gentle persuasiveness’ to bring the collection about. A similar rationale had been provided for Essays on ‘The Welfare State’. Commitment to Welfare was organised into four thematic sections. But this gave an ‘exaggerated impression of tidiness which I hasten to disavow’, as the more Titmuss tried to understand ‘the role of welfare and the human condition the more untidy it all becomes’. Among those thanked for their comments were Abel-Smith and Townsend and, from the United States, Eveline Burns and Ida Merriam. In an enigmatic turn of phrase, ‘the aid, subjective and objective, of my wife’ was also acknowledged.