Employers and Social Policy in the UK, 1908-75

This paper looks at British employer attitudes towards the development of social policies relating to unemployment, sickness/health, and old age during three major episodes in the twentieth century. Following Korpi’s typology, it argues that employers have consented to reforms in all three policy areas: on no occasions did UK social reforms pass in the face of substantial employer antagonism, neither have employers been significant instigators of reform. The chapter shows that employers’ influence on UK social policy development  was throughout enhanced by two factors: (i) trades union divisions; and (ii) the powerful role within Whitehall of the Treasury, a department whose default position has been to oppose increased state intervention. Trades union divisions were particularly evident, the chapter argues, in the early twentieth century  and with respect to pension reform in the 1960s and 1970s .