In 1858 John de Fraine, one of the not inconsiderable band of popular but subsequently obscure public lecturers of Victorian Britain, was announced to give his first professional lecture at the Sailors' Institute, Shadwell. It was, de Fraine later recalled, ‘a rather trying experience’.

From 1850 to 1900 the public library movement was dominated by the struggle for ‘extension’ in the sense of new adoptions of the Library Acts, and for the expansion of existing library systems and provisions. Late nineteenth-century librarians were quite capable of conceiving of library ‘extension’ entirely in such terms. This chapter considers extension in its later sense, which, to avoid systematic anachronism, we might term library ‘outreach’.

We still know relatively little about library outreach before 1930. Thomas Greenwood's accounts of the history and current condition of the public library movement, which commenced in 1886, provide us with scraps, and once the British library press was established coverage became fuller. But much of the early literature on library outreach is exhortation rather than description, and the coverage of outreach in existing library histories is rather sketchy.

This is not surprising, because outreach activity for much of this period was itself patchy and uneven. Of course the circumstances of the movement as a whole were not propitious. Given that many libraries were struggling just to stay afloat, the idea of actively increasing demand could quite naturally seem unattractive. In any case, the process of achieving necessary support for the adoption of the Library Acts almost invariably involved a considerable campaign of publicity, and it was tempting for promoters to feel that the library was already, at its foundation, enshrined in the communal consciousness.

Introduction

This chapter examines social security since 1997, focusing on developments inthe latter half of the first term of the New Labour government and the startof its second term. Although the story begins in 1997-98 when new policieswere being proposed, an important stage was reached in the last two years ofgovernment when the first raft of policies were being implemented. Thestory, or rather this particular chapter in the story, concludes with thefirst year of the 2001 government when further policies were implementedand, of greater interest, earlier policies redefined. In terms of policyimplementation, the chapter addresses the government’s attempt topursue a radical agenda for welfare that requires constant short-termtinkering and reassessment in order to achieve longer-term goals.

More specifically, this chapter focuses on three areas of thegovernment’s reform agenda that, it will be argued, have contributedmost to New Labour’s recasting of social security, namelywelfare-to-work, pensions provision and, most recently, asset-based welfare.Other programmes associated with social security, such as family policy, arenot discussed for reasons of space (see Chapter Five; Dean, 2002). Theserepresent the essential elements of a welfare philosophy based on the newtrinity of work, welfare and assets, by which New Labour is redefiningwelfare and citizenship. The good citizen is someone who works for a living(thereby making few or no claims on social security), saves a portion oftheir earnings, and uses their savings to contribute substantially to theirown and their family’s future welfare. This trinity develops themessage of New Labour’s first term: from ‘work for those whocan, security for those who cannot’ (DSS, 1998a, p iii) tosavings for those who can, security for those whocannot. This key message was prefigured in the pension GreenPaper (DSS, 1998b, p 23) and the pensions credit White Paper (DSS, 2000b, p15) and adumbrated in its proposals for asset-based welfare (HM Treasury,2001a, p 1). The practice of saving is being elevated from a privateaspiration of the prudent individual to a core duty of the good citizensupported by government, such that “those who can save have aresponsibility to do so” and the “focus of thegovernment’s saving policy should be to encourage individuals todevelop a regular saving habit” (DSS, 1998b, p 29; HM Treasury,2001a, p 9).

In recent years the notion of human nature has returned to centre stage of social policy and politics. According to Alan Deacon “the debate about the future of welfare has entered a crucial and extraordinarily interesting phase” characterised by “the prominence accorded … to questions of character, behaviour and morality” (1997, p 131; see Hewitt, 2000). Politicians and academics have shown renewed interest in the importance of theories of human nature and character in public policy. Margaret Thatcher claimed that the success of her policies was based on “clear, firmly held principles which were themselves based on a right understanding of politics, economics and above all human nature” (quoted in Shrimsley, 1996). Critical of this view, Tony Blair (1995) has argued that his politics “draws on a broader and therefore more accurate notion of human nature than one formulated on insular self-interest.” Yet the debate about the importance of self-interest in defining human nature is no longer one between the Right and the Left, but is found at the hub of centre-left politics. Politicians such as Frank Field now argue that self-interest is the most important among the different human motivations that welfare reform should address (1997, p 165). Today, leading politicians use theories of human nature as one of the principal means of justifying policy.

One reason for the renewed interest in human nature is the realisation that the justification for different political values derives from differing and often competing views of human nature. During the postwar decades, the Right saw human nature as driven by the dominant motivation of self-interest, while the Left saw more collective sentiments as dominant. For a free-market thinker like Sir Keith Joseph (1976, pp 59-60), the principal human “motive is not goodwill…. [I]t is enlightened self-interest”, whereby through the market “the self interest of the businessman is harnessed to the interest of his customer by competition”. For a socialist like Titmuss (1970, p 225), a “deep human motive” of altruism resides in human nature such that “the ways in which society organises and structures its social institutions – and particularly its health and welfare systems – can encourage or discourage the altruistic in man”.

Introduction

This chapter examines some of the key themes shaping New Labour's social security policy, assesses whether its policies continue or break with the Tories’ legacy of 1997 and speculates on where Labour is taking social security. First, having posed the terms of the question of continuity or discontinuity, the chapter examines the changing needs of four social groups on which the government has focused: lone parents, unemployed poeple, disabled people and pensioners. Second, the chapter seeks to describe the government's ‘Third Way’ in social security in tackling the problems of these groups and in seeking a path that departs from the policies of Old Labour and New Tories. Finally, it outlines the changing direction of welfare under Labour. The next two sections will be largely descriptive in content and the last more speculative.

The question of continuity or discontinuity – between the social policies of New Tory and New Labour, of Old and New Labour, and of the classic and new welfare states – is central to the analysis of social policy today (Powell and Hewitt 1998). However, it becomes an increasingly complex question the more you attempt to disentangle the lines of continuity and discontinuity.

At first glance, some continuity with the social policies of the former Tory government is evident. Labour stuck to Tory expenditure plans for the first two years of government and will not raise levels of income tax during the remaining three years (Chapter Two). It implemented Tory plans not to up-rate the Income Support premium for lone parents and One Parent Benefit but to remove these benefits altogether from new claimants – reforms passed by Parliament despite considerable public dismay.

In other areas the new government has broken continuity with the previous government. Most significantly it has announced an increase of £56 billion in public spending in its Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) for the final three years of government, although little of this is intended for social security. It has promised to keep the basic pension which the Tories proposed privatising.