The ‘long view’ offered in the contributions to the ‘40th anniversary preface’ offers scant consolation to a social policy analyst today in the UK, and one suspects in much of Europe and beyond. Jonathan Bradshaw notes the alarm 40 years ago from the then Tory government when unemployment reached one million. At the end of 2011, one million was the level of youth unemployment in the UK! Total unemployment stood at 2.64 million. And this is before the bulk of the public expenditure cuts committed to by the 2010 Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government take effect; cuts that Clare Ungerson, reflecting on what was happening during her editorship of the Year Book/Social Policy Review in the 1980s, acknowledges are unprecedented.

The implications of the planned public expenditure cuts and the Coalition's broader ‘reform agenda’ for specific areas of social policy are addressed in Part One of this collection, which focuses on current developments in the UK. In her introduction to the anniversary preface, Caroline Glendinning identified the increasing internationalisation of the Year Book/Social Policy Review as one of its most significant developments. In keeping with that trend, the remaining two parts of the collection turn their focus to other countries. Part Two includes an examination of social policy in ‘developing’ countries, including in Africa and the Arab nations. Part Three considers the fate of social welfare in countries among the worst hit by the ‘economic crisis’, including Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Iceland.

Part One: Current developments

Majella Kilkey

Part One analyses developments during 2011 in five key areas of social policy – social security, housing, higher education, family support and health. Unsurprisingly given that it was the first year of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government, 2011 has been a busy one in all of those policy areas. As we see across the chapters, the ‘politics of coalition’ per se has contributed to the ground upon which developments have been taking place. So too has the continuing global economic crisis and the cutbacks in public expenditure that, for some at least, this is deemed to have necessitated. In all areas examined, though, it is Conservative ideology that seems the dominant component in the developments that have occurred.

Introduction: 40 years of Social Policy Review

Caroline Glendinning ACSS, Professor of Social Policy, Chair, UK Social Policy Association

As Chair of the Social Policy Association (SPA) during the 40th Anniversary year of the Social Policy Review, I am delighted to introduce this Preface.

Social Policy Review first appeared in 1972 in a rather different guise, as The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain. Jointly conceived by Professor Kay Jones and (then) publishers Routledge and Kegan Paul, the Year Book provided a critical review of recent developments in social policy and social work. Since then, it has moved publishers, to Longman and, most recently, The Policy Press, with a period in between when it was published ‘in house’ by the SPA. Indeed, one crucial development over these four decades has been the establishment of close links with the SPA. This has given the Year Book/Review a clear audience, of teachers and students in social policy, for whom it has become a vital source of discussion and debate on contemporary issues. It also means that the SPA can offer junior colleagues opportunities and mentoring in academic commissioning and editing. Three other developments stand out over the past 40 years: the shift from a focus on very recent developments in policy and administration to broader debates and trends; the regular rotation of editors to bring in new ideas and approaches; and, perhaps most significantly in a globalised policy environment, at least as much attention to international as to UK issues.

Some of the key turning points in the history of the Year Book/Review are marked in this Preface by those who were involved at the time – Jonathan Bradshaw, Clare Ungerson and Robert Page. Their accounts illustrate how much the study of social policy has changed over the past 40 years – and how the success of the Year Book and the Review has been rooted in their ability to adapt and keep pace with these changes.

The beginnings: 1972 – The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain 1971

Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor of Social Policy, University of York

The first edition was published in 1972 by Routledge and Kegan Paul and edited by Kathleen (Kay) Jones who was the editor of their International Library of Social Policy.

Introduction

Never let a good crisis go to waste. That would seem to be the logic of the Conservative-led Coalition which, having come to office in May 2010, has embarked on a profound restructuring of the welfare state and the public sector more broadly. While there is much continuity with previous New Labour policy, there are important differences and the scale of change envisaged is substantial. Public expenditure across the board is being drastically reduced and the welfare system reshaped. Citizens are being left to rely more on themselves and an ambiguously defined ‘Big Society’, while being required to demonstrate that they are sufficiently ‘responsible’. The context that is being used to justify all this is the need to reduce the huge public sector debt resulting from the bailout of the financial industry and New Labour's Keynesian response to the economic crisis which began in 2007. Yet these changes entail something far more than what is necessary simply for deficit reduction; they will leave a structural legacy for the welfare state that will endure well beyond this Parliament, and involve a very particular view of where the balance of sacrifice and responsibility should lie.

This issue of Social Policy Review casts a critical eye over many of the reforms being advanced by the Coalition government. In doing so, and given the profound long-term importance of these reforms, we have breached tradition by merging the first two sections of the Review into one extended symposium. We are acutely aware that the delay between the writing and publishing of a volume like this leaves a time lag during which events will inevitably have progressed; if a week is a long time in politics, a few months is an eternity during a crisis. Yet we are satisfied that we have gathered here a range of incisive contributions which provide analyses of the ideas, evidence, continuities and breaks relating to the government's evolving reforms that will continue to be essential reading for some time.

We start with an overview of Conservative social policy by Hugh Bochel in Chapter One, which sets the context by examining the development of Conservative Party social policy while in opposition and the challenges posed to the Conservatives by New Labour governments.