Introduction

Abstract

Richard Morris Titmuss was appointed Professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics in 1950. He was not the architect of the modern British social services state, but he soon made himself its ideologue, although as much its critic as its advocate. His impact on the intellectual underpinnings of welfare and society in the complacent and consensual Britain that came in with Attlee and Bevan and went out with the Thatcherites and the Monetarists simply cannot be underestimated. In the words of Ann Oakley:

The post-war period was a brave new world to many. It was one with which Richard Titmuss was intimately associated. He influenced the manner in which the welfare state evolved and was understood, not only in Britain, but as a model to be emulated and improved on by other countries. The Labour Party in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, particularly its social security and pension plans, would not have been the same without him.¹