Introduction

Equality and social justice are central concepts to social policy (forexample, Weale, 1978, 1983; Plant et al, 1980; Le Grand, 1982; Edwards,1987; Powell, 1995) and Old Labour (for example, Townsend and Bosanquet,1972; Bosanquet and Townsend, 1980; Hattersley, 1987; Sullivan, 1999). Ithas been claimed that New Labour’s third way has diluted its socialjustice and equality agenda. However, White (1999, p 168) notes that afundamental weakness of much third-way philosophising lies in the tendencyto regard basic concepts such as ‘fairness’ and ‘socialjustice’ as having self-evident and clear, unequivocal meanings.

This chapter explores the social justice of New Labour’s socialpolicy. After outlining social justice in the context of social policy andNew Labour respectively, it illustrates the government’s socialjustice agenda in its own terms and (briefly) in the wider extrinsicsense.

Social policy and social justice

There are two major problems in applying social justice to social policy.First, social justice is generally undertheorised, and sometimes evenundefined. It is simply a ‘good thing’, and whatever supportsthe author’s (often undefined or vague) view of social justice isregarded positively. In short, with the major exception of Hayek (1976), whoregards social justice as a ‘mirage’ or an entirely empty andmeaningless term (Plant et al, 1980, pp 58-62; George and Wilding, 1985, p25; Lund, 2002, pp 4-6), everyone is in favour of (their view) of socialjustice and against social injustice.

Second, there have been few attempts to bridge the divide between the twocultures of the philosophical and empirical worlds (Miller, 1976; Le Grand,1991; but see Phelps Brown, 1991; Powell et al, 2001). Many discussions ofsocial justice show considerable conceptual elegance (for example, Phillips,1999; Callinicos, 2000; Dworkin, 2000), but little empirical application.There are few examples of a “moral scrutiny of a policypractice” (Edwards, 1987). Edwards (1987, p 1) argues that there is awide gap in British academic and non-academic thinking between the substanceof social policies on the one hand and moral thought on the other. All toorarely are social policies and the ideas behind them subjected to criticalmoral thought. And all too often the substance of policy has been the‘football’ between one unthinking political reaction andanother.