schools of citizenship: charity and civic virtue - civitas

Schools of Citizenship

Schools of Citizenship:Charity and Civic Virtue

Frank Prochaska

Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil SocietyLondon

First published April 2002

© Frank Prochaska andThe Institute for the Study of Civil Society 2002

The Mezzanine, Elizabeth House39 York Road, London SE1 7NQ

Cover illustration, ‘Freedom of Speech’ byNorman Rockwell, printed by permissionof the Norman Rockwell Family Agency.

© 1943 the Norman Rockwell Family AgencyCollection of the Norman Rockwell Museum at

Stockbridge, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust

email: [email protected]

All rights reserved

ISBN 1-903 386-19 5

Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom of Speech’ was one of aseries called The Four Freedoms, the other three being‘Freedom from Want’, ‘Freedom from Fear’ and ‘Free-dom of Worship’. They were created in 1943, inspiredby a speech given by Franklin D. Roosevelt, andtoured America raising money for War Bonds. $133million worth of Bonds were sold, and over fourmillion copies of the images were distributed world-wide.

Typeset by Civitasin New Century Schoolbook

Printed in Great Britain byThe Cromwell Press

Trowbridge, Wiltshire

Among democratic nations it is only by associa-tion that the resistance of the people to the govern-ment can ever display itself; hence the latteralways looks with ill favour on those associationswhich are not in its own power; and it is wellworthy of remark that among democratic nationsthe people themselves often entertain against thesevery associations a secret feeling of fear andjealousy, which prevents the citizens from defend-ing the institutions of which they stand so muchin need.

Alexis de TocquevilleDemocracy in America (1840)

This publication has been made possibleby a generous research grant from

the Earhart Foundation

The author and publisher would like to thankLeonard P. Liggio,

President of the History and EconomicsResearch Foundation, for his support and assistance

vii

Contents

Page

Acknowledgement vi

Author viii

ForewordRobert Whelan ix

1 A Great Army of Busybodies 1

2 Charity and Republican Virtue 7

3 Working-Class Charity 17

4 Voluntarism versus Collectivism 27

5 The State Triumphant 33

6 The Democracy of Charity Revived? 41

Notes 49

viii

Author

Frank Prochaska is the author of several books onthe history of British philanthropy, including Womenand Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England(1980), The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy inModern Britain (1988), and Royal Bounty: The Makingof a Welfare Monarchy (1995). His most recent book isThe Republic of Britain, 1760-2000 (2000). He is aLecturer and Senior Research Scholar in the Depart-ment of History, Yale University, and a Senior Re-search Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research,London University.

ix

Foreword

In the days when people thought in a more allegoricalway, it was not unusual for artists to depict ideas intriumphant form. The seven sacraments, the divineright of kings, the blessings of empire, commerce,education, truth and valour have all had their respec-tive triumphs in paint and plaster, marble and mas-querade.

We are less inclined to talk in terms of the triumphof this or that nowadays, although, as the economistMaynard Keynes famously observed, ideas are no lesspotent. ‘Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.’1 Thedecades following the Second World War saw thetriumph of planning, as people looked to the state toprovide them with everything from health care andeducation to transport and telecommunications. Whenthe inadequacies of the state as omni-provider becameapparent, the 1980s saw the triumph of the market.The discipline of the market was seen as the remedyfor the inefficiency and remoteness of the state. Thismodern Manicheanism in which the whole world wasdivided between good (the market) and evil (the state)failed to satisfy, as it conflicted with most people’sexperience of life. There are some things—in fact mostof the best things—on which you cannot put apricetag.

And so the 1990s saw the emergence of severalattempts to find some space between the state and themarket: a third way, or third sector, or some species ofcommunitarianism. Out of this suburb of half-wayhouses came a renewed interest in the concept of civilsociety as a conglomeration of institutions whichmediate between the individual and the state. Thefamily, the churches, professional associations,

SCHOOLS OF CITIZENSHIPx

charities and self-help initiatives all found themselvespart of this new idea—which in reality was not so newat all. Civil society was promoted as the answer to thesocial ills which divide us: its component parts wouldmake us self-supporting, altruistic and energeticcitizens. Not surprisingly, the idea was pounced uponby members of all political parties, who tried to co-optit into their manifestos. In the process, it hasundergone some strange transformations, as nobleconcepts tend to do when politicians get hold of them.

We therefore decided to ask Frank Prochaska towrite this essay for us on the history and significanceof the idea of civil society. Dr Prochaska is, in everysense, the ideal author for such a study. He is thehistorian of English philanthropy, whose books havetransformed the way in which we look at the subject.In his first book, Women and Philanthropy inNineteenth-Century England (1980), he drew onextensive research through historical archives to showthat philanthropic work offered women opportunitiesfor leadership, entrepreneurship, financialmanagement, hands-on delivery of services and aplace in policy debates which would not have beenopen to them through any other channels. RoyalBounty (1995), his history of the involvement of theRoyal Family with charity, threw new light on thesignificance of the voluntary sector for a constitutionalmonarchy. His most recent book, The Republic ofBritain (2000), demonstrated that republicanism isnot necessarily the enemy of monarchy but of tyranny.Many advocates of republicanism, at least in theBritish tradition, have seen voluntary action as a vitalmeans of developing those civic virtues on which arepublic depends, and if that meant having a Royalpatron to drum up support for a charity, then so be it.

Dr Prochaska’s experience in these related fields

FOREWORD xi

has enabled him to untangle the sometimes confusingand rival interpretations of civil society, which hedescribes as ‘among the most fertile, if amorphous,concepts in history’ (p. 4). He is able to show that thenotion of civil society as a clearly defined spacebetween citizens and the government is of relativelyrecent origin, given an early expression in ThomasPaine’s Common Sense (1776). Paine drew animportant distinction between voluntary associationsand government. The former promote our happiness,the latter restrains our wickedness. Voluntary actionhas been seen as a mainstay of a free and open societyever since, providing ‘a moral training and experiencein the democratic grass roots’ (p. 6). It is an importantcomponent of a free-market economy, ‘the human faceof capitalism’ (p. 8). However, as the state took overmore and more of the functions of voluntaryassociations, the institutions of civil society wereweakened. They lost many of their functions, andmuch of their influence on the formation of character.At the same time, as Dr Prochaska astutely points out,the centralising tendencies of the collectivist stateactually disempowered people who no longer had theopportunity to do things for themselves at a local leveland on their own initiative. ‘The more ... politicianstalked about the people and the national community,the weaker people and communities became’ (p. 37).

And now, it’s all change again! Suddenly politiciansare enthusiastic about the small platoons, and want toenlist their support. Chancellor Gordon Brown, who,in 1988, decried charity as ‘a sad and seedycompetition for public pity’, now wants to re-invigoratecharitable service (p. 42). He admits that the motherin a playgroup may know better than the man inWhitehall. However, charities, and indeed all of theinstitutions of civil society, should be wary of the

SCHOOLS OF CITIZENSHIPxii

ambiguous embrace of the state. As Tocquevillereminds us, in the brilliant passage which forms theepigraph to this book, governments don’t really likeorganisations which are outside their control. That iswhy they try to deal with the inconvenience, in the olddays by prosecution and prescription, in modern timesby subsidy and regulation. There is much talk today inthe voluntary sector of a ‘compact’ with the state. Thiscould turn out to be the sort of compact which theoysters had with the Walrus and the Carpenter: itends up with one party getting eaten by the other.

By publishing Schools of Citizenship, we hope to joinwith Alexis de Tocqueville in encouraging citizens todefend ‘the institutions of which they stand so much inneed’. This is the sort of short book which can only bewritten by the author of several long ones. It draws ona lifetime of reading, writing, talking and thinking. Itdistils the history and literature of nations to makeprofound points in an elegant and epigrammatic prosestyle which has almost vanished from the groves ofacademe. Civil society is due for a triumph of its own,with Frank Prochaska amongst its laureates.

Robert Whelan

1

1

A Great Army of Busybodies

The poor will always have us with them. Andcharitable action has been hallowed since

antiquity. But in Britain at different times, charityhas been taken by champions of the working class tobe subversive of their independence, and by promotersof the all-embracing state to subvert the progressiveplans for democratically elected governments.Subversion is in the eye of the beholder. Clearly,charity can lift or depress the spirits. At its best, it isan expression of altruism and personal service,wholesome and redemptive, not least to the giver. Atits worst, it can be little more than a kindness thatkills, adversarial and punitive, not least to those onthe receiving end. In the creative chaos that hasalways marked charitable campaigning, one person’sphilanthropist can be another person’s killjoy. Butwhatever one thinks of the charitable, no one can denytheir historic social engagement. It is worth recallingA.J.P. Taylor’s observation that voluntarists, ‘a greatarmy of busybodies, ... were the active people ofEngland and provided the ground swell of herhistory’.1

In mid-Victorian Britain, a sense of philanthropicduty to the community prevailed over any assertionthat the deprived had a right to national assistance. Ahundred years later, government had taken over muchthat previously had fallen to the charitable services.

SCHOOLS OF CITIZENSHIP2

By the 1960s, charity was widely seen as little morethan an amenity, a rung on the ladder leading to the

welfare state. The ideologicalbattle which took placebetween voluntarists andcollectivists in the twentiethcentury appeared to havebeen won by the latter. Thelong-running policy debatelargely turned on the role ofgovernment in shaping asocial democracy. On one side

stood those who advocated traditions of personalservice and the participatory, ‘subscriber’ democracyinherent in local voluntary institutions; on the otherside were those who advocated collective provision andcentral government control. As both parties were givento self righteousness, there was little love lost betweenthem.

Ultimately, one’s view of charity is political, for itraises the thorny issue of how a society should beadministered. Much in political life turns on usage,and the political classes, attuned to shifts in publicopinion, are continually redefining words with a viewto reaction or reform. What, for example, do the wordssocialism or conservatism, left or right, mean today?Charity has not been immune to changes in usage.Most Victorians thought it to be the most wholesomeway of promoting individual reformation and socialharmony. Even if writers such as Dickens drewattention to the misguided activities of ‘morally tidy’campaigners, charity was an essential sphere of socialrelations. Throughout the nineteenth century, it waswidely seen as an expression of local democracy andcivic pride, of hope and aspiration.

‘The ideological battlewhich took placebetween voluntaristsand collectivists in thetwentieth centuryappeared to have beenwon by the latter’

A GREAT ARMY OF BUSYBODIES 3

To twentieth-century collectivists, on the otherhand, charity was a distasteful conceit, redolent ofhierarchical values and unfashionable pieties. Charityremained alive among individuals and institutions,but most policy makers and social theorists took theview that it was socially divisive and irrelevant to theneeds of the poor. For decades, a school of historiansdemonised philanthropy as a form of ‘bourgeoish e g e m o n y ’ , a t h i n l ydisguised form of self-interest, which was at oddswith working-class culturea n d s o c i a l i s ttransformation.2 To thosewho interpret society interms of class conflict, thevery idea of noblesse obligeis an insult. A proper social democracy, argued Bar-bara Castle, a former Labour Minister of Health,should show ‘a toughness about the battle for equalityrather than do-goodery’.3 The use of ‘do-gooder’ as aterm of abuse encapsulated a transformation ofvalues.

In the heyday of state-directed services in Britain,people often dismissed charity without thinking of thepolitical benefits of voluntary activity. In so far aswelfare was perceived as synonymous withgovernment provision, it was assumed that the poorhad little hope of improving their condition withoutreference to the state. But with collectivism in retreat,fewer people now look to the state for the cure of allsocial ills or see state planning as the road to freedom.Many are alienated by faceless bureaucracy and whatthey see as an erosion of participatory democracy.Consequently, there has been a revival of interest in

‘But with collectivism inretreat, fewer people nowlook to the state for thecure of all social ills orsee state planning as theroad to freedom’


charitable service, a tradition in which citizens areseen as having duties as well as rights. In the yearsahead, it seems unlikely that perceptions ofphilanthropy will be reduced again to middle-classdeceit or a stage on the way to the welfare state.

The revival in status ofBritish charity cannot beexplained simply by referenceto disenchantment with statebureaucracy, cuts in statutoryservices, or the fiscal incentivesto the voluntary sector suppliedby successive governments. Italso has to do with the

language of politics, which is reshaping the context inwhich charity is understood. Importantly, charity hasbeen elided with notions of civil society or communityservice in the last decade. Consequently people feelmore comfortable with it. Since the collapse of theSoviet Empire in 1989, an interest in civil society hasgrown enormously in Britain, as elsewhere. Westernsocieties have been reminded of the democratic andsocial benefits of voluntary institutions. Once takenfor granted, civil society is now so topical that it hasbecome the common ground for both civic socialists

and civic conservatives.Civil society is among the

most fertile, if amorphous,concepts in history, for itdeals with the possibilities ofsociability and the bound-aries of politics. As a writerin the Economist reports: ‘itis universally talked about intones that suggest it is a

‘civil society is now sotopical that it hasbecome the commonground for both civicsocialists and civicconservatives’

‘As a buffer between thegovernment and thecitizenry, civil societypromotes a moralenvironment in whichindividual rights andcivic virtues, essential tosocial well-being, may beexpressed’

A GREAT ARMY OF BUSYBODIES 5

Great Good’, in part because it is ‘often mentioned inthe same breath as democracy’.4 Nowadays it usuallyrefers to a separate sphere, a half-way house of freeassociations between the state and society, whichmitigate the atomising effects of both bureaucraticgovernment and the market. As a buffer between thegovernment and the citizenry, civil society promotes amoral environment in which individual rights andcivic virtues, essential to social well-being, may beexpressed.5 As one theorist puts it, ‘it has the potentialof making all our societal relationships rather lessthan totally obvious... It can offer new routes offreedom by showing that the world does not have to belike it is’.6

Families and neighbourhoods are often seen ascrucial to civil society, for they provide the mostimmediate protection in a hazardous and uncertainworld. Charities, community organisations, tradeunions, pressure groups, think tanks and other non-governmental organisations are among civil society’sother institutional forms. All of them operate within apluralist political culture and are an expression of freeassociation, individual rights and formal legality.7 Butas Brian Harrison points out, it cannot be said that allvoluntary organisations, particularly those dedicatedto single issues, are ‘in every respect pluralist in theirideals, instincts or impact’.8 Interest groups are notalways tolerant of open discussion. Many are selfappointed and unaccountable. At the extremity, theymay even pose a threat to the democratic processthrough the promotion of violence or direct action.There is a type of voluntarism, it should be said, thatundermines the very civil society that sustains it, apoint that events in America on 11 September havemade more obvious.


Charities are by definition less self-interested thanother types of voluntary organisation. They are ‘untidyand imperfect’, as Ralf Dahrendorf observes, but theynonetheless contribute to a more ‘prosperous, civil andliberal world’.9 Many of them have an implied politics,and some lobby government within the framework oftraditional legislative procedures. But under existinglaw a political purpose is incompatible with charitablestatus, though the question as to whether ancillarypolitical activity is permissible is less clear. Of the180,000 institutions registered with the CharityCommissioners in Britain, few resort to direct action.Their operations are part of the democratic process, ‘abadge of citizenship’ as the Commission on theVoluntary sector put it in 1996.10 Not all of them canbe called ‘subscriber democracies’ (many have beenrun by autocrats), but at their best they provide amoral training and experience in the democratic grassroots.

7

2

Charity and Republican Virtue

Over the centuries republicans and classicalliberals have insisted that a vibrant civil society,

however defined, requires a high degree of civic virtueto sustain it. Civic virtue is, ofcourse, the foundation ofrepublican thought, whichenshrines free institutionsoutside the state. Charitableinstitutions may be seen as anembodiment of what has beencalled ‘civic republicanism’.The phrase is coming intoprominence in Europe andAmerica, where it is increasingly believed thatcharities and other voluntary institutions should playa more prominent role in national life. Drawing oneighteenth and nineteenth-century sources, today’spolitical scientists see the taproots of republicanism inself-government and civic spirit, a willingness to joinwith others in the promotion of the commonwealth, orin modern usage, liberal social democracy. A specificquality necessary to promote the common good is adesire to act charitably, for the virtue of charitycontributes not only to individual happiness but tosocial integration.

Current definitions of civil society draw on ancientideas of republican citizenship infused with Christian

‘Current definitions ofcivil society draw onancient ideas ofrepublican citizenshipinfused with Christiannotions of social justiceand benevolence’


notions of social justice and benevolence. Civic repub-licanism, despite its secular associations, has oftenbeen driven by religion.1 Radical literature is dottedwith references to ‘Christian republicans’, whoespoused Christ’s doctrine of ‘love’ and ‘charity’.2

Charitable activity has been all the more intense inBritain because of religious allegiances, which have

encouraged a f lower ing o finstitutions competing for convertsand custom. There is a stronglinkage between charity and freeenterprise, as there is between civilsociety and free enterprisegenerally. The free enterprise of

philanthropy is, in a sense, the human face ofcapitalism, addressing the social and individual illswhich capitalism often creates. In the communion ofChristianity and commerce, civic virtue echoes theCalvinist’s suspicion of wealth, which encouragesgiving some of it away. Much charity may be seen ascivic republicanism turning its mind to socialconditions under religious pressure.

Res publica, of course, simply means the ‘publicthing’, a malleable concept which succeedinggenerations have linked to progress or the public good.Though a protean idea, it has enduring associationsnot only with civil society but with the expansion ofdemocratic rights. In contemporary America, wherethe concept of republican virtue has re-emerged, it isassociated with participation in such causes as multi-culturalism, women’s rights and environmentalism.3

In contemporary Britain, the word ‘republic’ has beenhijacked by anti-monarchists; but the core ofrepublican thought still resides in individual freedomand public spirit, which sustains a vibrant civil

‘The free enterpriseof philanthropy is... the human faceof capitalism’

CHARITY AND REPUBLICAN VIRTUE 9

society. Wherever they are found, democraticrepublics, whether presided over by a monarch or apresident, require a high degree of engagement by thecitizenry. Historically, most republicans have beenless interested in government forms than the rule oflaw and a vision of virtuous citizens creating a higher,risen life.

With its foundations in communal bonds and publicspirit, civil society, like republicanism, is protean. Ourpresent vision of civil society,i n w h i c h v o l u n t a r yinstitutions mediate betweenthe individual and the state,h a s r e l a t i v e l y r e c e n tideological origins. Classical,early Christian, and neo-Roman authors saw littlevalue in the creation of aseparate sphere of voluntaryinstitutions as a bufferagainst government.4 When classical republicansdiscussed civil liberty, they thought of it in highpolitical terms. And when they described public spiritthey thought of it in terms of political or militaryservice. They were, as Quentin Skinner puts it,‘innocent of the modern notion of civil society as amoral space between rulers and ruled’.5 But animportant ideological shift was taking place in theeighteenth century over the application of republicanvirtue. In an era of urban growth and democraticstirrings, the idea of civic virtue had moved on amongthe politically articulate. The city itself had alwaysbeen an element of civil society.6 But to the citizens oflate eighteenth-century London or Philadelphia, civicrepublicanism did not mean the same thing as it did

‘most republicans havebeen less interested ingovernment forms thanthe rule of law and avision of virtuouscitizens creating ahigher, risen life’


to citizens of ancient Rome or renaissance Florence.In his great polemic Common Sense (1776), the

republican Thomas Paine drew the importantdistinction between government and civil society.Indeed, his most recent biographer argues that the

pamphlet was ‘the first politicalessay in modern times to makeand defend the distinction ...between civil society and thestate’.7 To Paine, the state was anartificial contrivance, ‘the badge oflost innocence’ as he famously put

it. Voluntary institutions, on the other hand, openedup visions of reform based on man’s naturalsociability. ‘Society’, he wrote, ‘is produced by ourwants, and government by our wickedness, the formerpromotes our happiness positively by uniting ouraffections, the latter negatively by restraining ourvices. The one encourages intercourse, the othercreates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last apunisher’.8 Paine was part of a movement of ideas thatwas giving shape to a vision of citizenship thatrecognised participation in voluntary, non-governmental institutions as a test of republicanvirtue. This was in keeping with commercialexpansion and the massive flowering of civic andcharitable institutions taking place at the time.

Paine may be seen as a bridge between the moralcommunity of civic republicans and the rights-basedculture of liberal individualism. His ideal republic, aland of liberty free from arbitrary rule, could onlyflourish through civic virtue embodied in freeassociations outside government control. Like manyradicals, Paine spoke more about rights than duties,and he expressed his own civic spirit through political

‘Society is producedby our wants, andgovernment by ourwickedness’


association rather than benevolence. But, as he knew,political association invigorates civic life generally.The active citizenship valued by all republicans,whatever their stripe, was communitarian in outlook,emphasising the bonds that linked autonomousindividuals. It found expression in the array ofvoluntary societies, not least among them charities,which appeared in ever increasing numbers in thenineteenth century. In an urban, commercial society,a viable republic depended on active citizens placingthe good of the community before their own self-interest. Happiness itself was the product of socialengagement or participatory virtue.

For centuries, voluntary bodieshave been at the cutting edge ofsocial and political action, whetherthey were charities for the poor,societies for mutual aid, religiousassociations, or radical debatingclubs. They spread information,stimulated debate, and provided essential services.Moreover, they were seen as a check against bloated,uneconomical government, a cause dear to reformersof various political persuasions. The promotion ofdecentralised government, it should be emphasised,was a principal object of British republicans, orCommonwealthmen, after 1688. It remains so todayamong Paineite republicans, who often look to theregeneration of civil society for social and politicaltransformation. The current emphasis on devolutionand responsible citizenship in Britain carries forwardthe ideals of a democratic republic. As the republicanwriter Jonathan Freedland argued in Bring Home theRevolution; The Case for a British Republic: ‘the morewe rely on ourselves, the smaller our need for the

‘the more we relyon ourselves, thesmaller our needfor the state’


state; the smaller the state, the more we will learn towork together’.9

Democracy comes in different forms, and in the pastit did not necessarily mean majority rule or popularsovereignty. Paine advocated representativedemocracy for larger political communities; but, likeSamuel Taylor Coleridge and Alexis de Tocqueville, hebelieved local institutions outside government controlembodied self government.

Democracy is immanent in institutions. Manyvoluntary societies, of course, were not inspired by afaith in democracy, and some of them had littleenthusiasm for the participation of the membershipfor reasons of confidentiality.10Nevertheless, mostcharities encouraged habits of association and may beseen as an expression of democracy in the sphere ofsocial and moral reform. Institutional self government,it was argued, not only provided a check on themechanisms of the central state—and the tyranny ofthe majority—but guaranteed peaceful competitionand solidarity based on shared interests. AsTocqueville, the great theorist of associationaldemocracy, argued: ‘The greater the multiplicity ofsmall affairs, the more do men, even without knowingit, acquire facility in prosecuting great undertakingsin common.’11

As a focus for communal values, charities attract, asthey have always done, individuals from differingbackgrounds to co-operative ventures. While bringingtogether people with little in common beyond aninterest in a cause can create friction, voluntary bodiesoften help to break down personal barriers and reducesocial fragmentation. Those open to the general publichave sufficient flexibility to permit people to join or toresign at will. With public meetings and elected


committees, they are run with a minimum ofinterference or contractual obligation, though this isbeing subverted today by increased governmentfunding. In the past at least, they could achieve theirad hoc purposes without being stifled by ritualisedconventions or immobilised by politics. As proponentsof civil society argue today, the fluid, instrumentaltraditions of voluntary association insulate nationsfrom collectivist utopias and make a rigid,monopolistic political system less likely to develop.12

A democratic process takes hold in the seeminglyinefficient muddle of charitable activity. Take thepractice, once common among British charities, ofelecting beneficiaries by the vote of subscribers. TheVictorians sometimes criticised these ‘voting charities’as anachronistic, but such institutions sharpened thesignificance of participation and had the merit ofmaking personal bonds between the giver and thereceiver of assistance. Typically, a committee drew upa list of candidates eligible for relief, and all thesubscribers then voted, each casting his or her voteproportional to the amount of his or her subscription.The practice may have been, as Florence Nightingalecomplained, ‘the best method for electing the leasteligible’, but it embodied a democratic process,however corrupted by ‘electioneering’. Indeed, formany benefactors, particularly women, they were theonly votes available to cast. As the managers of thevoting charities insisted, the freedom to contributedirectly to charitable outcomes also brought insubscribers.13

Whether conservative or radical, driven bypaternalism or individualism, charitable campaignershave commonly assumed that free associations give avoice to subscribers and civic leaders and a hand up tothe needy, while acting as a counterweight to


government. Among the most consistent arguments infavour of charitable activity is that it promotes self-help and local independence and offers an alternativeto uniform assistance. (These points were often madeby defenders of the voluntary hospitals before theywere nationalised in 1948.)14 Seen in this light,

philanthropic bodies, likeother voluntary associations,are bastions of democraticpluralism, an expression ofboth the rights and duties ofrepubl i can c i t i zenship .Associational philanthropycarries forward the ancientobligation of civic duty withina commercial society, with its

accent on individual autonomy. As ‘schools of citizen-ship’, to use Tocqueville’s phrase, charities, likedebating clubs or societies for mutual aid, are part ofthe process of encouraging and diffusing localdemocracy. As nineteenth-century republicansbelieved, local autonomy serves not only as anantidote to standardising bureaucracy, but helps toheal social divisions, for it encourages class co-operation at the local level.

Take an example of an institutional expression ofcivic republicanism in the nineteenth century, whichbrought together a motley collection of supporters,including royal dukes, dissenters, Paineiterepublicans, and humble subscribers. The cause wasworking-class education. It was given tremendousimpetus by King George III, who, unlike conservativechurchmen, was happy at the prospect of poor childrenbeing able to read. In 1805 he gave his patronage tothe Quaker Joseph Lancaster, a pioneer of the‘monitorial system’ of education, in which the pupils

‘philanthropic bodies ...are bastions of demo-cratic pluralism, anexpression of both therights and duties ofrepublican citizenship’


themselves, coached by a master, taught other pupils.The King’s patronage and the consequent supportgiven to Lancaster by his sons, the Prince Regent andthe Dukes of Sussex and Kent, transformed the societyinto one of the nation’s most useful institutions. Beforethe government took an interest in education, itprovided rudimentary schooling for hundreds ofthousands of poor children.15

Radical support for a cause taken up by themonarchy may seem incongruous. Clearly, the aimsand motives of the royal family and the radicals whojoined the Royal Lancasterian Association (later theBritish and Foreign School Society) were often at crosspurposes. From the Crown’s point of view, royalsupport for Lancaster’s experimental schools forgedlinks with advanced opinion, while promoting widerloyalty to the throne. The radical tailor Francis Place,a member of the Association’s committee, had adifferent purpose. To him, the education of poorchildren was the foundation of democratic reform,working-class dignity and independence. Whatever theunderlying politics of the British and Foreign SchoolSociety, its supporters were willing to set aside theirdifferences because they believed the cause to be ofoverriding social worth. The educational charities ofthe early nineteenth century provide telling proof thatphilanthropy was open to all backgrounds andpersuasions and could be justified on grounds ofdemocratic benefit and the promotion of virtue.

The philosophy that inspired nineteenth-centurycharity confirms that British society accepted socialhierarchy but put a premium on public spirit, theremoval of inequalities and the advance of disciplinedliberty, all essential republican principles. For manyLiberals, who carried forward the republican belief in


the importance of civic virtue, philanthropy was aform of enlightened self-interest. John Stuart Millelaborated its political significance. ‘The only security

against political slavery, is thecheck mai n t a i n e d o vergovernors, by the diffusion ofintelligence, activity, andpublic spirit among the gov-erned.’ Without the habit ofspontaneous voluntary action,he added, citizens ‘have theirfaculties only half developed’.16

With a deep-seated belief in the value of the individualand the social value of individual conscience, liberalsand republicans, who were often at one in thenineteenth century, have always been more supportiveof charity than socialists. Drawing heavily on radicaltraditions, they have never been obsessed bycollectivism or class.

‘Without the habit ofspontaneous voluntaryaction, citizens havetheir faculties onlyhalf developed’

17

3

Working-Class Charity

Charity is largely driven by temperament. It istherefore suggestive to think of the history of

charity not in terms of class, but more broadly as thehistory of kindness. This conveys the importance ofphilanthropy at all social levels and reveals itsimplications for individuals, families andcommunities. The standarddefinition of philanthropy orcharity is love of one’s fellowman, an inclination or actionthat promotes the well-being ofo thers . I t thus inc ludesbenevolence within classes aswell as between them. Castwidely to include informal,domestic expressions of kindness, the philanthropicnet catches virtually everyone at one time or another.Often the recipients themselves turned charitable inbetter days, for one of the striking things aboutkindness is its contagiousness. Many a workingman,for example, having had the hat passed round for hisown emergency, gave generously to others in theirtime of trouble. The springs of charity are deeplyrooted in such customs, often little more thanimpulses, and the needs and aspirations of people whorespond to their difficulties and opportunities in aparticular way, whether it be in the home, the pub or

‘Many a workingman...having had the hatpassed round for hisown emergency, gavegenerously to others intheir time of trouble’


some grander social setting. The desire to protect one’s community or to express

one’s aspirations through charitable work has alwaysappealed across the social and ethnic spectrum.Charitable association has always been a mostpromising way for diverse minorities who areculturally vulnerable or politically isolated to forge arelationship with the wider society. Virtually allminorities in Victorian Britain had associations thataddressed the needs of their distinct communities.

Germans, Italians and Fren-ch set up their own voluntaryhospitals. Among Christiansthere were philanthropicemphases . Low churchAnglicans favoured tract andBible societies; Unitarianspromoted educational causes;Congregationalists and

Methodists were well represented in the temperancemovement. Catholics founded innumerable charitiesthat mirrored Anglican ones. Such institutions werenecessary, if only as safeguards against proselytisingevangelicals.

Religious persecution, whether real or perceived, isa great incentive to philanthropic association. Notsurprisingly, Jews established some of the mostdistinctive institutions in Victorian Britain, from theself-consciously élite Board of Deputies to the humblehevras, which offered relief and community services toJews who found themselves isolated in an alienculture.1 Among today’s most rapidly expandingBritish charities are those for the defence of Islamicand Muslim communities. In the five years betweenNovember 1996 and November 2001, the CharityCommissioners registered 385 Islamic and Muslim

‘Religious persecution,whether real or perceived,is a great incentive tophilanthropic association’

WORKING-CLASS CHARITY 19

societies. (Over 100 Hindu and Sikh charities werealso established in these years.)2 The number of blackand Asian charitable workers today is living proof ofthe fact that charity is not the preserve of the whitemiddle class.3

The availability of records of wealthy, middle-classinstitutions has distorted our understanding ofphilanthropic experience. But the relative dearth ofevidence for working-class benevolence should not leadus to underestimate its extent. In the past, as today,much working-class charity was informal,spontaneous and unrecorded, often merging withmutual aid.4 Relatives could be counted upon in timeof trouble; running out of them could be a shortcut tothe workhouse. In communities with a settledpopulation, neighbours also came to the rescue. MrsPember Reeves emphasised this point in her classicstudy of the London district of Kennington before theFirst World War, Round About a Pound a Week:

should the man go into hospital or into the workhouseinfirmary, extraordinary kindness to the wife and childrenwill be shown by the most stand-off neighbours... Theserespectable but very poor people live over a morass of suchintolerable poverty that they unite instinctively to save thoseknown to them from falling into it.5

Apart from casual benevolence, which waswidespread, working men and women establishedsoup kitchens, washhouses, temperance societies,Salvation Army shelters, boot and clothing clubs,ragged schools, and funds for the victims ofgovernment repression. Servants set up their owncharities to look after servants in distress. Navvies,who had a marked sense of self-help, established sickclubs and visiting societies, complete with navvyofficials. When the working classes co-operated withwealthier neighbours, as in hospital provision or


foreign missions, their philanthropy often acted as aspringboard into the existing social system. This wasparticularly important in an era when most workingmen and women remained outside the political nation.When the disenfranchised contributed tounemployment funds or passed the hat round for therelief of the Tolpuddle martyrs, their actions may beseen as an expression of radical politics by extra-

political means.6

Middle-class women were alsoexcluded from politics. For them,philanthropy was a form of self-expression, a readily availableway of breaking out of thedomestic routine and wieldinginfluence. Charitable work was alever which women used to prise

open the doors closed to them in other spheres, for inits variety it was experience applicable to just aboutevery profession in Britain. Charitable administrationnot only broadened the horizons of women but pointedout the limitations of their lives. Inevitably, it broughtthem into politics. Women trained in philanthropicsocieties, particularly those focusing on moral reformand education, were prominent among those whopetitioned the House of Commons praying for theenfranchisement of their sex.7 They often cited theircontributions to charity as a justification of their rightto vote. In turn, in their view, ‘political power reallydoes mean active benevolence’.8 The movement forwomen’s rights illustrates the affinity of charitablevalues and the political values of civil society. It is atelling example of how charitable organisationdiffused the idea of participatory democracy byproviding ideas and recruits to political campaigns.9

‘Charitable workwas a lever whichwomen used to priseopen the doorsclosed to them inother spheres’


The assumption that charity is the preserve of richconservatives has done untold damage. Clearly, activebenevolence justified the social standing and increasedthe authority of the propertied, but this is a partialview. Historians, perhaps unconsciously, have tendedto perpetuate the view of many middle-classVictorians, who, according to the Victorian ChartistJohn Collins, had little idea ‘that working menpossessed any feeling or humanity’.10 It was sometimesargued that the donations of the poor to charity were,as one writer put it, ‘beyond all comparison the mostimportant’, for they were an expression of sharedvalues and a common culture.11 The press occasionallypicked out humble philanthropists in the nineteenthcentury, to encourage others and show that no oneclass had a monopoly on good works. John Pounds(1766-1839), shoemaker and founder of ragged schools,and Sarah Martin, (1791-1843) seamstress and prisonvisitor, were perhaps the most celebrated. Theirunsung successors can be found in myriad associationsin poor neighbourhoods today, from playgroups topensioners’ clubs, where their work merges with dailylife.12

The kindness of the poor to the poor was soextensive in the nineteenth century that FriedrichEngels declared that ‘although the workers cannotreally afford to give charity on the same scale as themiddle class, they are nevertheless more charitable inevery way’.13 In the 1890s a survey of working-classand artisan families showed that half of themsubscribed weekly to charity and about a quarter ofthem also made donations to church or chapel.14 Wellover half the income of several general hospitals camefrom humble contributors.15 The League of Mercy,founded in 1899, raised £600,000 from artisan and


working-class subscribers for the voluntary hospitalsof London.16 A London cleric putsuch practices in stark politicalterms at the beginning of thetwentieth century when he wrotethat working-class philanthropystood between ‘civilization andrevolution’.17 Arguably, the

philanthropy of the poor did as much as thephilanthropy of the rich to subvert the revolutionaryagenda that Engels and others so desired. Such anotion sheds a different light on the commonassumption that philanthropy is subversive ofworking-class independence.

The degree to which charity saturated people’s livesin the past, both givers and recipients, is difficult toimagine for anyone who has grown up in the shadowof the welfare state. A glimpse of the social microcosmof Rothschild Buildings in the East End, themselves apart of late Victorian ‘philanthropy at four per cent’, istelling. Apart from the extensive network of casualbenevolence performed daily by the residents in thiscommunity, organised charities luxuriated. Runmostly by women, often with the assistance of the poorin the tenements, they included: Sick Room Helps’Society, Jews’ Lying-in Charity, Israelite Widows’Society, Jewish Soup Kitchen, Whitechapel Children’sCare Committee, Boot Club, Clothing Club, Children’sPenny Dinner Society, Ragged Schools’ Union, BareFoot Mission, Children’s Country Holiday Fund,Jewish Ladies’ Clothing Association, and a SavingsBank. This concentration of ‘charity, thrift, andpaternalistic interference in the lives of therespectable working class’, remarks the historian ofthe buildings, ‘was to steal its way into every pore’ of

‘working-classphilanthropy stoodbetween civilizationand revolution’


the residents, particularly the children.18 This wouldnot have happened, it should be said, if the‘respectable working class’ had not co-operated or hadnot reaped some benefit from thecharitable world that engulfed them.

The proliferation of charitableinstitutions in the nineteenth centuryreflected values that have come to beseen, misleadingly, as the preserve of themiddle classes. Indeed, some historians define middleclass by reference to these values, having first definedthe values as ‘middle-class’.19 But while the majorityof charities which have left records behind were drivenby the middle classes, the desire to protect one’scommunity or to express one’s aspirations throughinstitutions appealed right across the social spectrum,from the aristocracy to the labouring poor. ‘Theprivilege of giving is open to all’ went a familiarVictorian saying.20 The missionary and Bible societieswere probably the most adept at bringing rich andpoor into charitable communion. Working-class andartisan families contributed millions of pounds tothese institutions in the nineteenth century.21

However impoverished the Briton might be, theAfrican or Asian could be made to look more wretched.

As a glance at working-class memoirs will attest,the poor knew the difference between ‘deserving andundeserving’ behaviour, and they did not need to bereminded that fitness, decency and self-help werewholesome. The leading historian of respectablesociety remarks: ‘independence, self-reliance, and selfrespect, pursued through companionship, co-operation, and voluntary collectivism, were hallmarksof the Victorian working classes’.22 Respectability waselastic, more an attitude of mind than a set of rules.

‘The privilegeof giving isopen to all’


Charitable institutions of all descriptions, whatevertheir size or social makeup, spoke its language.Whatever the background or social station of the giver,charity heightened status and self-esteem and offereda measure of respectability. It offered people in themost remote parts of the country opportunities toconnect with their communities, to get outsidethemselves into wider experience.

Contributions to civic and charitable institutionshad the great merit of encouraging men and women tofeel part of the moral and social economy. One shouldkeep in mind that Britain was administratively lessuniform and centralised than continental countries, atleast those conquered by Napoleon. In the mid-Victorian years, local authorities provided amultiplicity of goods and services that would astoundmany of today’s local government officials, whosepowers have been reduced so drastically byParliament. Cities and towns in the four distinctivenations were jealous of their autonomy and proud oftheir local customs. Their leading voluntaryinstitutions were pre-eminent symbols of civic virtue,often products of the new wealth created bymanufacturing and industry. In the nineteenthcentury, a charitable hospital or a missionary societywas the equivalent of an orchestra or football clubtoday in the local support it attracted.

By the end of the nineteenth century, charitableenterprise was not only a sign of respectability andcivic virtue but of national standing. Indeed, theVictorians equated their civilization with the highproportion of national activity given over to benevolentcauses, just as a later generation would equate it withthe welfare state. When Podsnap boasted to hisforeign guest in Our Mutual Friend that ‘there is not


a country in the world, sir, where so noble a provisionis made for the poor’, he was trying to show hiscountry to best advantage. When The Timesannounced in 1885 that London’s charitable receiptsexceeded the budgets of several European states, itwas a source of national and imperial pride.23 Tenyears later the Charity Commissioners gloried in theirreport ‘that the latter half of the 19th century willstand second in respect of the greatness and variety ofthe Charities created within its duration, to no otherhalf-century since the Reformation’.24

27

4

Voluntarism versus Collectivism

The very attainments of Victorian philanthropymade people more conscious of the social evils that

remained, and less willing to tolerate them. Growingcharitable receipts raised expectations of theirsuccessful application. But the persistence of poverty,particularly in its urban guise, was an acuteembarrassment in a society of obvious wealth thatprided itself on social improvement. The doubling ofpopulation over the reign of Queen Victoria and theintermittent periods of economic depression after the1870s put additional pressure on voluntary services,exposing their patchiness and lack of co-ordination.With its marked local character, charity was mosteffective in a prosperous society characterised byvibrant and variegated provincial traditions. Towardsthe end of the century, it had not only to operate in aharsher economic climate but in a culture growingmore homogeneous and national. The argument thatcharity was an expression of local or institutionaldemocracy was less telling after the reform bill of1884, which made the commitment to universalsuffrage and representative democracy unstoppable.

The ideological battle taking place between volun-tarists and the votaries of mass politics in theEdwardian years may be seen as part of the widerdebate between the proponents of competing politicalvisions of Britain that were often associated with


classes or parties.1 Those who sought a more radicaland equitable distribution of wealth welcomed greatergovernment intervention and set aside any worries

about its effects on civicresponsibility. At the otherextreme were those advocatesof charity who worried about adecline in moral activism, whot h o u g h t a n e l e c t o r a t eclamouring for rights andentitlements from government

would soon deride the duties of citizenship. Thefiercely individualistic Charity Organisation Societybelieved that government benefits would divorcepoverty from morality and ‘happiness’ from ‘duty’. Asocial philosophy that neglected the duties ofcitizenship was one in which democracy wouldatrophy. It was assumed that the more governmenttook over from self-governing associations, the moreindividuals would have to turn to the state forbenefits.

As a result of the growth of governmentresponsibility in the social sphere, charity found itselfon the defensive. Charles Booth’s dispassionate surveyLife and Labour of the People of London (1891-1903)and Seebohm Rowntree’s Poverty: A Study of TownLife (1901), provided ammunition to those who werecoming to the conclusion that benevolence was notscientific, nor comprehensive enough to address thecauses of poverty. Fragmented by parochialism,traditional campaigners, many of them women, wereat a disadvantage in an age of social science, masspolitics and declining religious enthusiasm. (Did thedecline in religion necessitate a greater role forgovernment?) Voluntarists often assumed that

‘A social philosophy thatneglected the duties ofcitizenship was one inwhich democracy wouldatrophy’

VOLUNTARISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM 29

distinctions between rich and poor were God-givenand likely to persist. Conditioned by the Christianview that humanity was corrupt and povertyineradicable, they found it difficult to compete withemerging secular philosophies that offered visions ofmankind perfected.

Given the persistence of poverty in an era of unprec-edented economic prosperity, the Christian analysismay seem less dated today. But in the early twentiethcentury, charitable activists looked increasingly old-fashioned to many social reformers in the Liberal andLabour parties. They laid themselves open to attackfrom intellectuals and socialists by their moraldistinctions and their lack of social theory. Thatcharities traditionally worked within the existingsocial structure made them anathema to manysocialists, who assumed that in accepting socialdivisions philanthropistsapproved of them. To Marxists,with their dialectical eye onu t o p i a , b o u r g e o i sphilanthropists looked like thetired remnants of feudalism.Nor did they have muchregard for the voluntarytraditions of mutual aid withinthe Labour movement. Friendly societies and co-operatives lacked centralising power, and having beenintegrated into the mixed economy could do little, itwas said, to challenge social injustice.

Against this background of opinion and thepioneering, albeit piecemeal, Liberal social legislationof 1905-11, charity found its status diminished. As thehistorian of philanthropy David Owen remarked:

When the focus shifted from ‘the Poor’ and what could be

‘The belief that povertycould be abolishedpresupposed an under-standing of what causedit in the first place’


done to relieve their distress, to poverty and what could bedone to abolish it, then it became inevitable that the Stateshould intervene more decisively and that the scope ofprivate charity should be correspondingly altered.2

The belief that poverty could be ‘abolished’presupposed an understanding of what caused it inthe first place. Here the voluntary sector, fragmentedby its respective campaigns, was at a disadvantage.Pulling in different directions, charities were not wellsuited to an investigation of the relationship betweenpoverty, old age and unemployment that had comeinto fashion in an era of improved social statistics. Nordid the claims of charitable campaigners to representtraditional institutional democracy have muchmeaning to ministers, who could argue that theyrepresented the citizenry entire after theRepresentation of the People Act of 1918. The triumphof universal suffrage did not promote local democraticforms, rather the reverse.

Many of philanthropy’s collectivist critics, by asleight of mind, assumed that their more ‘scientific’appreciation of the causes of poverty, made possible bysocial statistics, would lead to its elimination. All thatwas needed was the will of government and the rightfinancial arrangements. The Fabian Sydney Webb, forone, took it for granted that collectivism, which hedescribed as ‘the mother of freedom’, would ultimatelytriumph in social administration as in economicpolicy.3 The state would streamline social life by aprogressive takeover of those activities formerlyprovided by voluntary associations. In his idealisedrelationship between the individual and the statethere was little need for the intermediary institutionsof civil society, for the interest of the state and societywere identical. In their writings, Webb and his

VOLUNTARISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM 31

collectivist allies helped to create the illusion that thestate could transform society, as if by magic. They tookit for granted that the poor themselves wished for anextension of statutory provision and that taxpayerswould happily pay for it. The expectations thusaroused would place an enormous burden on latergovernments and form an ineradicable part of theprevailing climate of opinion in late twentieth-centuryBritain.

In the ever-greaterpoliticisation of the healthand social services thatemerged in the earlydecades of the twentiethcentury, charity struck moreand more commentators asnot only inadequate butpatronising. The LabourParty, which had grown outof a voluntary culture,became increasingly statist in outlook, a tendency thatthe two wars encouraged. Seen from socialism’s dizzierheights, charity’s personal approach to individualproblems was backward, demeaning, andinappropriate to an urban economy. As Aneurin Bevanput it, voluntary traditions were little more than ‘apatch-quilt of local paternalisms’.4

Charity’s capacity to create personal bonds betweenvolunteers and the needy struck some people as tooclosely identified with religious zeal. To others, notleast ‘masculine officialdom’, the tendency to see socialproblems in moral and parochial terms wascharacteristically ‘ feminine’ and thereforeamateurish.5 On the issue of philanthropy’s place vis-à-vis the statutory authorities, the divide between the

‘Seen from socialism’sdizzier heights, charity’spersonal approach toindividual problems wasbackward, demeaning,and inappropriate to anurban economy’


‘Beulah Land’ of voluntarism and the ‘Heavenly City’of socialism proved unbridgeable.6

The pioneers of state aid, from Edwin Chadwick toWilliam Beveridge, did not much identify with thosethey sought to relieve. Beveridge distrusted ‘thesaving power of culture and of missions and of isolated

good feelings’.7 As BeatriceWebb once put it, ‘ “amillion sick” have alwaysseemed actually moreworthy of self-sacrificingdevotion than the “childsick in a fever” ’.8 Thisimpersonal approach towelfare, the belief in theefficacy of legislation,state intervention and

large centralised bureaucracies was to become ascompelling a remedy for social ills to its advocates inthe twentieth century as individual service had beento the Victorians. The traditional liberal ideal ofbalancing rights and duties, as David Selbourne notedin The Principle of Duty was ‘being graduallyoverwhelmed by a politics of dutiless right, a politicsto which socialist aspiration made its own largecontribution’.9 The paradox was that twentieth-century collectivists had inherited from the Victoriansa paternalist approach which exceeded that of thephilanthropists they disavowed.

‘twentieth-centurycollectivists had inheritedfrom the Victorians apaternalist approachwhich exceeded that of thephilanthropists theydisavowed’

33

5

The State Triumphant

The creation of the post-war welfare state signalledthat in the longstanding battle between

collectivism and voluntarism there appeared to be aclear winner. The ministerial, civil service state ofBeveridge and the Webbs had routed the civicpluralism of Paine and Coleridge. To put it anotherway: indirect, representative democracy, expressedthrough Cabinet government, now reigned supreme insocial policy over the spontaneous, pluralistic form ofdemocracy that was immanent in the voluntaryinstitutions of civil society. Local government faredlittle better than the charitable sector, for the loss ofits principal service, the municipal hospitals, was acrippling blow to moraleand recruitment. Nor didthe Labour Party sparethe mutual aid societies,w h i c h h a d g i v e nsocialism its democraticinfrastructure and moralcentre.1 Having subduedi t s r i v a l s , c e n t r a lgovernment was on its way to perfecting a form ofexecutive democracy in which citizens were consumersof government rather than its producers.

The Labour government of 1945-50 was profoundlyinfluenced by the extraordinary circumstances of the

‘The war had boosted Labour’splanning mentality, and... itsleadership paid little heed tothe... good offices of voluntarysocieties’


war, and it did not fully appreciate where collectivismwould lead or how much it would cost, financially orculturally. The war had boosted Labour’s planningmentality, and under the sway of historicalmaterialism and collectivist ideals, its leadership paidlittle heed to the democratic impulses and good officesof voluntary societies with their ethic of personalservice. Richard Crossman, Labour Secretary of Statefor Health and the Social Services in the 1960s,recalled the left-wing Labour view of interwarphilanthropy as an ‘odious expression of socialoligarchy and churchy bourgeois attitudes. Wedetested voluntary hospitals maintained by flag days’.2

Ironically, among the most outspoken critics of theproposals for the National Health Service wereworking people, who valued the democratic characterand local control of their hospitals.3 To the prophets ofthe New Jerusalem, who believed that social lawsoffered an ideological blueprint for the reconstructionof society, charitable campaigners were irrelevant,whatever their class.

There was, in fact, nothing inevitable about theshape of the nation’s social provision, but the beliefthat history was moving in their direction hadencouraged collectivists to disregard traditionalpractices in favour of root and branch reform. It wasperhaps not surprising that they discouraged popularparticipation in their reforms, for if the triumph oftheir doctrine was inevitable, participatory democracywas pointless in any case. That deceptive civil serviceexpression ‘consultation’ helped to paper over thecracks. Yet, as Crossman conceded: ‘The impressionwas given that socialism was an affair for the Cabinet,acting through the existing Civil Service’.4 Labourministers simply assumed that the state was the

THE STATE TRIUMPHANT 35

embodiment of social good. They believed, inCrossman’s words, that it was ‘only through stateaction’ that a transformation of society and a sense ofcommunity could be achieved.5 Was the belief thatcitizens became moral agents through compulsorytaxation to pay for universal benefits, which oftenaccrued to those who did not need them, a deception?Few asked whether collective social properties existed.Socialists were so certain of itthat they did not bother toprovide the evidence.

Politicians and civil servantscould justify greater stateintervention in the socialsphere simply on the groundst h a t t h e i n t e r m e d i a t einstitutions of civil society hadbroken down during the warand were unlikely to recover.They could also argue that the Beveridge Plan wascomprehensive and based on insurance principles,unlike charity which was patchy and selective. Yet,the growing identification of the central state withsociety not only discouraged pluralism and localdemocracy but politicised ever wider areas of sociallife. The Labour government introduced, arguably forthe first time in British history, the sense thatvirtually everything was subject to politics. The beliefthat a programme of social progress would be set intrain by the ministerial push of a button became afeature of British politics. The vast expansion ofgovernment services created a hybrid form of socialimperialism, in this case turned inwards on littleEngland. Indeed, the collapse of the Empire and theneed to employ overseas civil servants at home helped

‘The vast expansion ofgovernment servicescreated a hybrid formof social imperialism,in this case turnedinwards on littleEngland’


the cause of administering what, to Whitehallmandarins, was a world of underlings.

For all the benefits—and they should not beunderestimated, particularly in health—collectivesocial action left the individual disconnected, while thenationalisation of culture eroded former loyalties.Individuals were in some ways more impotent in anage of universal suffrage and parliamentary

democracy than theirdisenfranchised ancestorsh a d b e e n u n d e r a noligarchic system.6 Howwere they to create linksbetween themselves andsociety in a political culturethat placed so little valueon individual effort and theintermediary institutions of

civic life? Was the creation of such a bureaucraticwelfare system an aberration in British history?Clearly, something fundamental was happening in asociety, so voluntarist in the past, in which the burdenof care shifted so radically to government, in whichanonymous officials doled out the nation’s capital inthe name of ‘the people’, while individual servicebecame characterised as a frill.

As if in compensation, politicians and socialcommentators sought to replace the sense ofcommunity, which people had built up in the past outof family life and local institutions, with a sense ofnational community, built out of party politics andcentral administrative structures. In passing sociallegislation, the government acted in the name offreedom, progress and social justice. But the more thegovernment expanded its social role into areas that

‘Individuals were in someways more impotent in anage of universal suffrage andparliamentary democracythan their disenfranchisedancestors had been under anoligarchic system’


were formerly the responsibility of families and localassociations, the more it diminished the duty, moralityand nobility of individuals.The more civil servants andpoliticians talked about ‘thepeople’ and the ‘nationalcommunity’, the weakerpeople and communitiesb e c a m e . W h a t h a dhappened, for the bestegalitarian motives, was abloodless takeover of civic responsibility by facelessofficialdom. The ostensible benefits made the takeovervirtually irresistible.

Gradually, the notion that a representativegovernment had tutelary power over the citizenry tookever-greater hold, and with it the concept ofministerial responsibility for cradle to grave socialprovision. As Tocqueville had observed, ademocratically elected government willingly works forthe happiness of the citizenry, but ‘it wants to be theonly agent and final arbiter of that happiness’. Itassures the needs and regulates the affairs of itscitizens but turns them into dependent clients andfixes them ‘irrevocably in childhood’.7 In Tocqueville’sanalysis, this state of affairs would become mostobvious in a régime that rose to power on theresentments of an oppressed class. As he saw it, selfrespect requires a high degree of self government in anegalitarian society. Without it, citizens unwittinglybecome their own oppressors. Arguably, his propheticwarning about the rise of a democratic form ofbenevolent despotism, built on class resentments andjustified in the name of welfare, had come to pass, notin America but in Britain.8

‘The more civil servantsand politicians talkedabout the people and thenational community, theweaker people andcommunities became’


Tocqueville’s ghost hovered over the debate on thefuture of charity in the immediate post-war years.Voluntary institutions were in funereal mood. Somedisappeared; many were nationalised, most notablyover a thousand charitable hospitals; others shiftedtheir priorities to avoid competition with government.Those with a traditional role in the social services,such as the Salvation Army and the city missions,soldiered on, there to catch the many people who fellthrough the state welfare net. Though little reported,the surviving institutions did not always disguisetheir hostility to officialdom, which the sometimessupercilious attitudes of politicians and civil servantsexcited. The King’s Fund, which continued torepresent the London hospitals, observed that the veryword ‘voluntary’ was anathema to large sections of theNational Health Service management.9 Still, thedemocratic case for charity still surfaced from time totime. The ousted voluntary management of theWorcester Royal Infirmary lamented: ‘We may nothave the wealth of Government, nor the power tocommand a big staff, nor the funds to build all werequire; but we have got a priceless asset, that as apeople we want to maintain our democracy not only ina parliamentary way, but in our social service’.10

In the House of Lords in 1949, several peers,unsettled by the genie of big government that hadbeen let out of the bottle, worried about ‘the naturalbias of the welfare state towards totalitarianism’.Voluntary action, as the Bishop of Sheffield argued,was one way of keeping it in check. The Labour peer,Lord Nathan, formerly a Liberal, joined in the paeanof praise to philanthropy, describing charities as‘schools in the practice of democracy’.11 Lord Beveridgehimself, who the year before had published his book


Voluntary Action, in which hecalled for ‘fruitful co-operation’between the state and voluntarybodies, seemed to be havingsecond thoughts about theimpersonal bureaucracy that had come into existence.He was aware of the state’s capacity to destroy ‘thefreedom and spirit ... of social conscience’.12

Philanthropy would always be needed, he observed:‘Beveridge ... has never been enough for Beveridge’.Some things ‘should in no circumstances be left to thestate’, he concluded, ‘or we should be well on the wayto totalitarian conditions’.13

The bureaucratic state, though impervious, provedless than monolithic, while the roots of civil societywere so deep in the British soil that nothing short oftotalitarianism could destroy them. By the standardsof Soviet planning, British collectivism was a poorthing, ad hoc and full of gaps. Charity, thoughbattered and diminished, survived. Apart from theolder institutions that persisted, new ones emergedpartly as a reaction to the very sense of powerlessnessthat individuals felt in the face of an imperfectdemocracy and the standardising tendencies of centralgovernment. The limitations of state social reform alsoheld out the prospect of charities and governmentdepartments working together. Partnershipprecipitated changes within charitable bodiesthemselves, bringing many of them into line withmodern conditions. Paradoxically, voluntary activitywould be broadened, sharpened and enlivened by thevery nationalisation of welfare that charitablecampaigners had so often opposed.

The insensitivity of the state machine to individualneed triggered a moral response from voluntary

‘Beveridge ... hasnever been enoughfor Beveridge’


bodies, as well as relatives and neighbours. To aTreasury official, a hospital waiting list is anabstraction. To a charitable campaigner, it is aninjustice. In Voluntary Service and the State, JohnTrevelyan argued that ‘all possible steps should betaken by those who lead voluntary endeavour to buildup an idealist philosophy for voluntary service of allkinds, a philosophy which will challenge thematerialism so prevalent in our time’.14 It was alsothought that charitable service might serve as achallenge to the elevated notion of ministerialresponsibility that had become so deeply ingrained. Tothe Secretary of the King’s Fund, Arthur Ives,ministerial pretension had risen to the level of ‘fiction’.‘We smile at the refinements of mediaevalscholasticism’, he remarked ‘but our own notionsabout the minister’s ultimate responsibility are justabout as far fetched’.15

Mutable, restless and fertile, the charitable sectordiscovered new needs and aspirations after the war. Inthe debate in the Lords in 1949, it was generallyagreed that philanthropy would and must endure, forin a ‘perpetually moving frontier’ it was necessary, asBeveridge argued, ‘to pioneer ahead of the state’.Partnership between volunteers and civil servants wasseen as necessary to the democratic process. As LordPakenham put it:

voluntary spirit is the life-blood of democracy ... the man whois proud to serve the community for nothing, is he whosepersonal sense of mission inspires and elevates the wholedemocratic process of official governmental effort’.16

One of the more pioneering roles of the ‘junior partner’in the welfare world was to provide a critique of thestate services. Increasingly, citizens would look tocharities for mitigation of government policy.

42

6

The Democracy ofCharity Revived?

In the 1960s and 1970s, the welfare state came undercriticism for red tape, secrecy, and an inability to

provide sufficient participation for the public.Furthermore, as the historian of social policy GeoffreyFinlayson noted, the charge traditionally levelledagainst voluntarism was now levelled at the welfarestate: that it could not cope with the volume of socialneed. ‘The citizenship of entitlement had ... led to anoverloaded state and a dependent citizen’.1 Though theplanning mentality was well entrenched, socialengineering was increasingly out of fashion. By the1980s, critics of statutory provision echoed argumentsput forward by voluntarists a hundred years earlier:that the role of the state should be essentiallyenabling, to provide conditions in which alternativeforms of welfare could flourish. The Whiggishassumption that British social provision was a linearprogression to the welfare state was coming unstuck.

The strategic planning in state welfare provisionwhich characterised the post-war decades ended indoubts, reassessment, and recrimination. FollowingMrs Thatcher’s victory in 1979, central governmentbecame an increasingly reluctant patron of the welfarestate, and the emphasis in health and social servicesshifted to the pursuit of efficiency, private-sectorexpansion and pluralism. Politics, it has been said, is

THE DEMOCRACY OF CHARITY REVIVED? 43

the organisation of hatreds. Just as the Labour Partymarshalled resentments against charity in the 1930s,the new-model Conservative Party took its revenge onthe public sector in the 1980s (though Mrs Thatcher’scentralising tendencies won her few friends amongvoluntarists).2 As the costs and inefficiencies ofgovernment provision mounted, charitable enterprisebegan to be taken far more seriously by politicians. Atthe end of the 1980s, it was given an additional boostby the collapse of the Soviet Empire and a newperception of civil society as a bastion of democraticvalues.

In the 1990s, leaders of the Labour Party, reelingfrom Thatcherism at home and the collapse ofsocialism abroad, felt obliged to distance themselvesfrom their collectivist past. Notions of community andcivil society offered Labour a way of building a newconstituency. In 1998, Tony Blair pronounced that it

was ‘the grievous twentiethcentury error o f thefundamentalist left’ tosuppose that civil societycould be replaced by thestate.3 In 1988, GordonBrown decried charity as ‘asad and seedy competitionfor public pity’.4 In 2001, he

launched a campaign to reinvigorate charitable serviceand civic spirit. As he intoned: ‘Politicians oncethought the man in Whitehall knew best. Now weunderstand that the ... mother from the playgroup ...might know better’. But Labour shows little sign ofwithdrawing from its commitment to state entitle-ments or lowering taxes in exchange for charitableservices. Charity, Brown insisted, was not ‘a cut-price

‘Politicians once thoughtthe man in Whitehall knewbest. Now we understandthat the mother from theplaygroup might knowbetter’


alternative to the state’.5

Labour thinking shows just how malleable a conceptcivil society can be. To manyin the Labour movement,civil society is not a separatesphere, nor a check onarbitrary government. Tothe Blair government, as toprevious governments,charities serve primarily as a way of implementingstate social programmes more efficiently and costeffectively. Presumably, the use of voluntary agenciesto do the government’s bidding is the elusive ‘ThirdWay’. In practice, it may be seen as a devolved form ofsocialism that turns the intermediary institutions ofcivil society into agencies of the state throughcontracts and financial control. Brown’s initiative isarguably the latest illustration of the tendency of allpost-war governments, sometimes consciouslysometimes not, to undermine the independence ofvoluntary institutions. No recent government, itshould be said, has had much regard for charitableindependence, in part because voluntary institutionsopenly criticise government policy. Tocqueville’s viewthat the state looks with ill-favour on institutionsoutside its control may be recalled. We might alsorecall his view that the citizenry are fearful ofdefending voluntary institutions, ‘of which they standin so much in need’.6

The generation that grew up during the heyday ofthe welfare state remains fearful of relying too muchon voluntary provision and continues to look togovernment for essential services.7 But the drift ofopinion away from collectivism in the youngergeneration is potentially momentous, though notentirely reassuring to charitable campaigners. Many

‘No recent government ...has had much regard forcharitable independence’


of them do not wish to take responsibility for erstwhilegovernment provision; others do not wish to toe theline of government paymasters. Still, as a consequenceof the cross-party embrace of charity, the public isbecoming increasingly aware of the range and depth ofvoluntary activity. Charity can no longer be dismissedas merely an amenity or an impediment to socialjustice. The problems that afflict British society arenow seen less in ideological terms than in the past,and they are thought to have solutions that require agreater degree of charitable contribution. For all itsinventive intervention, the state is widely seen as tooblunt and impersonal an instrument to providesecurity for British families without reinforcementsfrom volunteers.

As the interest in civil society has proliferated inrecent years, much of the tension between right andleft over social policy has been defused. Yet a degree oftension between the state and voluntary sectors isinevitable. The essence of charity, like the essence ofvoluntarism generally, is its independence andautonomy—it is the antithesis of collective orstatutory authority.8 Government provision dependson compulsory taxation; it is not altruistic butmaterialist in conception. It is largely about furtheringequality. Charitable provision, on the other hand,

cannot be extorted by force; itsproponents have usually beendriven by individualist ratherth an ega l i tar ian mot ives .Historically, the work of charityhas been an expression of a liberalp o l i t y , a t o d d s w i t h a negalitarianism in which rights

take precedence over duties. Distinctions between

‘where should thebalance lie betweenthe right to welfareand the virtue ofcharity?’


charity and government action are thus deeply rooted,not least in thinking about their respective roles andboundaries. The perennial question remains: whereshould the balance lie between the ‘right’ to welfareand the ‘virtue’ of charity?9

The divisions between left and right that havebedevilled opinion about British charity will no doubtpersist. But the continuing debate over social policyneeds to be based on a better understanding ofc h a r i t y ’ s u n d e r l y i n gc o n t r i b u t i o n t o c i v i cdemocracy. In a nation wherethere are more charitablevolunteers than charitablebeneficiaries, this contributions h o u l d n o t b eu n d e r e s t i m a t e d . 1 0 T h etendency to see philanthropy as a frill tacked on by thewealthy for selfish reasons not only overlooks thecomplexities of the subject but leaves the impressionthat kindness is beyond the capacity of rich and pooralike. Clearly, charity can turn privilege into virtueand propel people into good works who have littlegoodness in them. But who among us would wish to beadministered by those who deny the sincerity of allpublic spirit or affection? Which is moresubversive—and corrosive—to believe in altruism orto see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even ifaltruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believein it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.

To break down the tidy-minded half-truths aboutphilanthropy, it is sensible to see it in its variety andcontradictions, as an expression of a pluralisticsociety. As suggested, benevolence has as much to dowith temperament as class; and the poor themselves

‘charity can turn priv-ilege into virtue andpropel people into goodworks who have littlegoodness in them’


have made a significant contribution to charitabletraditions through their own efforts. In a society thatprides itself on ethnic diversity, voluntary groups thatprovide a distinctive voice to minorities will become anincreasingly attractive outlet for the expression of

idealism and communityspirit. Rethinking charity as aform of republican virtue maybe a way forward. When seenas an expression of publicspirit and participatorycitizenship, charitable workraises fundamental principlesabout the relationship of theindividual to the wider society.

In a materialist society in which democratic values arethought to be in decline, a reappraisal of the epithet‘do gooder’ is long overdue. Where charity is esteemed,citizens produce as well as consume government.

The charitable impulse has been described assubversive. Clearly, it is subversive of the centralisingstate and its penchant for social engineering. But overthe years, government has done more to subvertphilanthropy than the other way around. The attitudeof charitable campaigners to the state in thenineteenth century has been likened to the revulsionfelt by the curly haired boy in Nicholas Nickleby, ashis mouth opened before Mrs Squeers’s brimstone andtreacle spoon. Today, in the scramble for scarceresources, charitable campaigners eat eagerly out ofthe government trough. In the mid-1980s, about tenper cent of overall philanthropic revenue came fromgovernment sources.11 Ten years later, the figure stoodat about 35 per cent.12 The appetite for governmentfunding has become so great that it is the question is

‘The charitable impulse ...is subversive of thecentralising state ... Butover the years, governmenthas done more to subvertphilanthropy than theother way around’


now being asked whether charitable societies are infact voluntary today?13

Since much of the erstwhile tension between leftand right over social policy has been defused, a greaterdegree of partnership between the state and charitiesnow seems inevitable. But partnership should notmean amalgamation. Achieving an equilibrium agree-able to all parties is a chimera. Tension between thetwo sectors, with their different agendas andcontrasting democratic forms, is both desirable andinvigorating. The expression of civic virtue, after all,requires more than sitting back, paying one’s taxesand leaving the resolution of social problems toofficialdom. A decline in voluntary activity is ameasure of decay within a liberal society. In the end,the political maturity of a country is not measured bythe size or form of government. It is measured by apolity that provides the conditions of liberty conduciveto civil society and by what citizens willingly do forthemselves and one another.

50

1 Keynes, J.M., The General Theory ofEmployment, Interest and Money, London:Macmillan, 1936, p. 383.

1: A Great Army of Busybodies

1 Taylor, A.J.P., English History, 1914-1945,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 175.

2 See, for example, Stedman Jones, G., OutcastLondon, A Study in the Relationship betweenClasses in Victorian Society, Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1971; Donajgrodzki, A.P. (ed.), SocialControl in Nineteenth-century Britain, London:Croom Helm, 1977; Rozin, M., The Rich and thePoor: Jewish Philanthropy and Social Control inNineteenth-Century London, Brighton: SussexAcademic Press, 1999.

3 Castle, B., The Castle Diaries 1974-76, London:Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1980, p. 144, quoted inHarrison, B. and Webb, J., ‘Volunteers andVoluntarism’, in Halsey, A.H. and Webb, J. (eds.),Twentieth-Century British Social Trends, London:Macmillan Press, 2000, p. 614.

4 Grimond, J., ‘Civil Society’, The World in 2002,The Economist, December, 2001, p. 18.

5 See DeLue, S.M., Political Thinking, PoliticalTheory, and Civil Society, Boston: Allyn andBacon, 1997, p. 340.

6 Tester, K., Civil Society, London and New York:Routledge, 1992, pp. 5-6.

7 See Cohen, J. and Arato, A., Civil Society andPolitical Theory, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,1992.

8 Harrison, B., ‘Voluntary Action and Civil Society’,p. 10, to be published.

Notes Foreword

NOTES 51

9 Dahrendorf, R., After 1989. Morals, Revolutionand Civil Society, London: Macmillan, 1997,p. 79.

10 The Report of the Commission on the Future of theVoluntary Sector, NCVO, 1996, p. 23.

2: Charity and Republican Virtue

1 Oldfield, A., Citizenship and Community: CivicRepublicanism and the Modern World, Londonand New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 154, passim.

2 Prochaska, F., The Republic of Britain, 1760-2000, London: Penguin Books, 2000, pp. 91, 109.

3 Pettit, P., Republicanism: A Theory of Freedomand Government, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997,chapter 5. On American republicanism seeRodgers, D.T., ‘Republicanism: the Career of aConcept’, Journal of American History, 79, June1992.

4 DeLue, S.M., Political Thinking, Political Theory,and Civil Society, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997,pp. 340-03.

5 Skinner, Q., Liberty before Liberalism,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998,p. 17.

6 Dahrendorf, R., After 1989. Morals, Revolutionand Civil Society, London: Macmillan, 1997,p. 78.

7 Keane, J., Tom Paine: A Political Life, London:Bloomsbury, 1996, pp. 116-17.

8 Paine, T., Rights of Man, Common Sense, andother Political Writings, Philp, M. (ed.), Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 5.

9 Freedland, J., Bring Home the Revolution: TheCase for a British Republic, London: FourthEstate, 1998, p. 221.


10 Harrison, B., ‘Voluntary Action and Civil Society’,p. 9, to be published.

11 de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America,[1835,1840] New York: Random House, 1981,p. 412.

12 See, for example, Hirst, P., AssociativeDemocracy: New Forms of Economic and SocialGovernance, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994;Gellner, E., Conditions of Liberty: Civil Societyand its Rivals, London: Penguin Books, 1994. Onthe flexibility of Victorian charitable institutionssee Morris, R.J., Class, Sect and Party: TheMaking of the British Middle Class, Leeds, 1820 -1850, Manchester: Manchester University Press,1990, pp. 161-68.

13 Owen, D., English Philanthropy 1660-1960,Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,1964, pp. 481-82.

14 See Prochaska, F.K., Philanthropy and theHospitals of London: The King’s Fund 1897-1990,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, passim.

15 Prochaska, F., Royal Bounty: The Making of aWelfare Monarchy, New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1995, pp. 34-35.

16 Mill, J.S., Principles of Political Economy, [1848]London: Penguin Books, 1970, pp. 312-13.

3: Working-Class Charity

1 Rozin, M., The Rich and the Poor: JewishPhilanthropy and Social Control in Nineteenth-Century London, Brighton: Sussex AcademicPress, 1999, pp. 199-201.

2 I am grateful to the Charity Commissioners forthis information.

NOTES 53

3 On black volunteering see Hilton, R. and DavisSmith, J. (eds), Volunteering & Society: Principlesand Practice, NCVO, 1992, chapter 7.

4 See Standish Meacham, A Life Apart; TheEnglish Working Class 1890-1914, London:Thames and Hudson, 1977, chapter 2.

5 Mrs Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound aWeek, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914 , pp. 39-40.

6 On working-class charity see Prochaska, F., TheVoluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in ModernBritain, London: Faber and Faber, 1987, pp. 7-8,27-31. See also, Prochaska, F., ‘Philanthropy’, inThompson, M. (ed.), The Cambridge SocialHistory of Britain 1750-1950, 3 Vols., Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1990, Vol. 3, pp.362-66.

7 Blackburn, H., Women’s Suffrage: A Record of theWomen’s Suffrage Movement in the British Isles,with Biographical Sketches of Miss BeckerLondon: Williams and Norgate, 1902, chapter 4.See also Prochaska, F.K., Women andPhilanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 227-30.

8 The Westminster Review, Vol. cxxxii, 1889, p. 279.

9 On this point, see Harrison, B., ‘Voluntary Actionand Civil Society’, pp. 5-6, to be published.

10 Quoted in Harrison, B., ‘Philanthropy and theVictorians’, Victorian Studies, 9, 1966, p. 369.

11 The Christian Mother’s Magazine, ii, October1845, p. 640.

12 See Hatch, S., Outside the State: VoluntaryOrganisations in Three English Towns, London:Croom Helm, 1980, p. 51.

13 Engels, F., The Condition of the Working Class inEngland, Henderson, W.O. and Challoner, W.H.


(eds), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958,pp. 102, 140.

14 Family Budgets: Being the Income and Expensesof Twenty-Eight British Households, 1891-1894,1896, p. 75.

15 Abel-Smith, B., The Hospitals, 1800-1948,London: Heinemann, 1964, pp. 250-51.

16 Prochaska, F., Royal Bounty: The Making of aWelfare Monarchy, New Haven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1995, p. 159.

17 Conybeare, W., Charity of Poor to Poor, London:S.P.C.K., 1908, p. 6.

18 White, J., Rothschild Buildings: Life in an EastEnd Tenement Block 1887-1920, London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 148.

19 See Wahrman, D., ‘ “Middle-Class” DomesticityGoes Public: Gender, Class, and Politics fromQueen Caroline to Queen Victoria’, Journal ofBritish Studies, 32, No. 4, 1993, pp. 396-432.

20 The Juvenile Missionary Herald, xvi, June 1878,p. 95,

21 The Methodist and Baptist missionary societieswere among the most successful at elicitingcontributions from the working classes, most ofthem from women and children. See Prochaska,F.K., Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980,pp. 82-85.

22 Thompson, F.M.L., The Rise of RespectableSociety, London: Fontana Press, 1988, p. 353.

23 The Times, 9 January 1885.

24 Forty-Second Report of the CharityCommissioners, 1895, p. 17.

NOTES 55

4: Voluntarism versus Collectivism

1 Harris, J., Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain1870-1914, London: Penguin Books, p. 16.

2 Owen, D., English Philanthropy 1660-1960,Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,1964, p. 525.

3 Webb, S., ‘Social Movements’, in Ward, A.W.,Prothero, G.W. and Leathes, S. (eds), TheCambridge Modern History, 13 Vols., 1902-11,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Vol. 12,p. 765.

4 Bevan, A., In Place of Fear, London: Heinemann,1952, p. 79.

5 Prochaska, F., The Voluntary Impulse:Philanthropy in Modern Britain, London: Faberand Faber, 1987, p. 74.

6 Owen, English Philanthropy, pp. 517-21.

7 Quoted in Briggs, A. and Macartney, A., ToynbeeHall. The First Hundred Years, London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984, p. 61.

8 Quoted in Harrison, B., Peaceable Kingdom:Stability and Change in Modern Britain, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1982, p. 259.

9 Selbourne, D., The Principle of Duty, London:Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 38.

5: The State Triumphant

1 See Green, D.G., Reinventing Civil Society: TheRediscovery of Welfare without Politics, London:IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1993, chapter 10.

2 Crossman, R., ‘The Role of the Volunteer in theModern Social Service’, in Halsey, A.H. (ed.),Traditions of Social Policy, Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1976, p. 265.


3 Prochaska, F.K., Philanthropy and the Hospitalsof London: The King’s Fund 1897-1990, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 158.

4 Crossman, R., Planning for Freedom, London: H.Hamilton, 1965, p. 58.

5 Crossman, Planning for Freedom, p. 21.

6 Harris, J., ‘Society and state in twentieth-centuryBritain’, in Michael Thompson, M. (ed.), TheCambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950,3 Vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990, Vol. 3, p. 63.

7 Quoted in Siedentop, L., Tocqueville, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 93.

8 Siedentop, Tocqueville, pp. 92-95.

9 See Prochaska, Philanthropy and the Hospitals ofLondon: The King’s Fund, 1897-1990, p. 166.

10 MacMenemey, W.H., A History of the WorcesterRoyal Infirmary, London: Press Alliances, 1947,p. viii.

11 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, Lords, Vol.163, p. 89, 105. On charitable societies as‘nursery schools of democracy’ see Committee onCharitable Trusts, 1952-3, para. 53.

12 Beveridge, W., Voluntary Action: A Report onMethods of Social Advance, London: George Allen& Unwin, 1948, pp. 10, 318.

13 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, Lords, Vol.163, pp. 95-96.

14 [Trevelyan, J.], Voluntary Service and the State:A Study of the Needs of the Hospital Service,London, 1952, p. 17.

15 King’s Fund Archives, Arthur Ives to JohnTrevelyan, 13 June 1950, file titled ‘SocialService Enquiry (Trevelyan).

NOTES 57

16 Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, Lords, Vol.163, pp. 95-96.

6: The Democracy of Charity Revived?

1 Finlayson, G., ‘A Moving Frontier: Voluntarismand the State in British Society Welfare 1911-1949’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 1,No. 2, 1990, pp. 205-06; Finlayson, G., Citizen,State, and Social Welfare in Britain 1830-1990,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, p. 366.

2 Prochaska, F.K., Philanthropy and the Hospitalsof London: The King’s Fund 1897-1990, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 228-29.

3 Quoted in Harrison, B., ‘Voluntary Action andCivil Society’, p. 1, to be published.

4 The Times, 3 May 1988.

5 The Times, 11 January 2001.

6 de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, [1835,1840] New York, 1981, p. 578.

7 See, for example, Taylor Gooby, P., The Future ofGiving: Evidence from the British Social AttitudesSurvey, Charities Aid foundation, 1993.

8 Gladstone,F.J., Voluntary Action in a ChangingWorld, London: Bedford Square Press, 1979,pp. 3-4.

9 On this issue see Den Uyl, D.J., ‘The Right toWelfare and the Virtue of Charity’, SocialPhilosophy & Policy, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1993,pp. 192-224.

10 In 1980, it was estimated that around sevenmillion people participated directly in theprovision of charitable services, albeit most ofthem part time. See Gerard, D., Charities inBritain: Conservatism or Change?, London:Bedford Square Press, 1983, p. 18. For furtherstatistics on volunteers see Harrison, B. and


Webb, J., ‘Volunteers and Voluntarism’, inHalsey, A.H. and Webb, J. (eds.), Twentieth-Century British Social Trends, London:Macmillan Press, 2000.

11 The Times, 17 December 1984.

12 The Report of the Commission on the Future of theVoluntary Sector. Summary of Evidence, NCVO,1996, p. 18.

13 See Whelan, R., Involuntary Action: HowVoluntary is the Voluntary Sector?, London: IEAHealth and Welfare Unit, 1999.

schools of citizenship: charity and civic virtue - civitas

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