Introduction

The 1931 economic crisis inaugurated a decade of relatively little progress in the making of social policy. Dominated by the tenets of fiscal orthodoxy, which saw the remedy to Britain's economic ills as tax cuts and reductions in public expenditure, the Conservative-dominated National government followed a policy of ‘safety first’ in social and economic management and commanded a huge parliamentary majority. In total, the National government won 554 seats in the 1931 general election, as against only 61 for all opposition MPs combined. The Labour Party was electorally and ideologically devastated by the events of 1931, its representation reduced from 288 seats in 1929 to a mere 52 (many of which were rooted in Labour's unshakeable base of coalmining). Some consolation could be gleaned from the fact that the National government's crushing majority was partly a product of the ‘first past the post’ electoral system – Labour's share of the total vote only fell from 37.1 per cent (1929) to 30.6 per cent (1931) – but the decline of the Liberal Party meant that forming a government demanded a higher share of the total vote than had been the case in the 1920s. Given the bleak economic climate, the possibility of innovation in welfare policy-making was remote (unlike the USA, where recession gave birth to the New Deal). But the hegemony of ‘safety first’ in parliament did not necessarily reflect public opinion as a whole, and the cause of social reform was kept alive in certain quarters. One of these was the broadly liberal ideological coalition that has come to be known as ‘middle opinion’.