In this review of the changing relationship between social policy and social justice I will be concerned with three main areas of debate. Firstly, I wish to attempt a clarification of the moral ideals of social welfare which find expression in those criteria of social justice by which people in similar states of need are treated differently. My second concern is to review and redefine what constitutes the social division of welfare in Britain today. Thirdly, I wish to explore the extent to which these ideals of social welfare complement or conflict with one another.

Difficulties encountered in the transfer of money to a minority group in society are explored. Should benefits for disabled people seek to mitigate earnings loss, functional incapacity or damage? Should they take the form of contingency benefits, merited payment, or compensatory and reparatory ‘gifts’? What are the reasons for the different approaches adopted in the War Pensions, Industrial Injuries, and Invalidity Benefit schemes?

An historical account of the development of these schemes shows that payments related to attributed characteristics or ‘condition’ avoid the pitfalls of undue stress on status, performance and achievement inherent in alternative, and apparently more integrative, benefits. Payments related to condition accentuate ‘difference’ but if they represent a collective liability for society's vicariously caused diswelfares, they need not be experienced as stigmatizing. It may therefore be possible to conceive of a compensatory / reparatory payment for all disabled people, as of right, independent of insurance status, average life earnings, current wage, and other measured achievements. To avoid ‘physiological and psychological means testing’ the basic payment would be assessed on a disabled person's assumed ‘loss of faculty’ but, in the interest of equity, individual measurements of functional limitation may be necessary for additional cash benefits and services.

This paper began by referring to assumptions of conflict. It seems inevitable and beneficial that two sets of values should run through organization. Conflict between control and dynamism, anxiety and uncertainty, constraint and freedom, relates to the sort of work that any organization has to perform – someone has to make the running while others have to count the cost. Such conflicts are similar to general human ambivalence and form part of the dynamics of change as well as of control. But the balance to be struck between development and control is a matter of choice, which can be reinforced by structural and training patterns. This does not dispose of the issue as to whether the civil service in fact does obstruct change. This essay has argued that there are concepts relating to those values that are particularly important to public organizations. But it is virtually impossible to argue, as some have done, as to whether our present breed of administrators, are friendly or inimical to change. Nor does it answer the question of where and how social policy values are formed.

In summary, my argument has been as follows:

(a) social policy values can be classified in several different ways. A classification used here is a distinction between basic values or ‘oughts’ and concepts concerned with the ‘hows’ or with the instruments and institutions with which values are pursued. There are reciprocal relationships between these concepts but they are usefully analysed as separate relata;

(b) the values of central government civil servants and ministers will tend to be instrumental in form, though not necessarily in conflict with social policy-values, because they control complex organizations in which non-operational abstractions have to be made over the whole range of public policies;

(c) policy formulation is becoming more sophisticated, but the functions of government concerned with development and value analysis are not adequately structured or legitimated. As a result disciplined enquiry, much of which is financed by government, has inadequate impact because there is no overriding change model in which training has a part.

Tribunals are at the centre of a growing controversy concerning citizen rights in welfare. In the first of two articles, attention is drawn to some of the salient features of this controversy and particularly to those aspects concerning national insurance local tribunals (NILTs). A special analysis of D.H.S.S. records is presented giving a picture of the distribution of the work of NILTs over different benefit categories, of success rates, of the extent of attendance by appellants and of representation. Generally the analysis suggests that NILTs are more varions and less confined by law and regulation than is often assumed. Findings from surveys of chairmen, members and appellants are also presented. Men constitute the great majority of those concerned with NILTs and there are some striking contrasts between varions groups in age and education. People who serve NILTs are shown to be active in a wide range of community activities and particularly in professional organizations, trade unions and local politics.

Studies of the American ‘War on Poverty’ have concentrated on the period 1964–8 during which it attracted much attention due, firstly, to its optimistic claims to abolish poverty and, secondly, to the militant tactics used by some of its participants. Little note has been given to the years 1969–71, yet during this period significant changes occurred. In the Spring term of 1972 I was able to visit a number of the programme's projects and to study at the headquarters of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Having had access to documents with a limited circulation I am thus able to describe developments in the later period in a way which, to my knowledge, has not been published previously in Britain.

In an earlier article, the writer discussed the general background of social security and social welfare in Hong Kong; and went on to consider in particular what might usefully be learnt from the public assistance scheme as it has developed in Hong Kong. This article considers the other areas of social security in Hong Kong. It also touches on management control in social security.

There are many calls for greater variety in the provision of higher education combined with greater transferability between courses and institutions – in short, that we should end the present hierarchy of esteem in which institutions and subjects of study are commonly held.

Is this likely to be done easily? Too little consideration has been given to the size and strength of the social forces that create educational elitism. Some idea of this size and strength may be gained by looking, as a revealing example, at some educational history. Elitism has survived in times when the factors usually thought of as decisive have been strongly adverse to it. We should not hope that its virulence is any less now. New approaches are needed, and a concerted effort to decide what these approaches should be is now urgent.

To have much hope of achieving perceived equality of esteem of diverse types of higher education, an intensive study of the causes of elitism in education, and of measures that would have some chance of reducing it, is needed. A single Royal Commission type of inquiry is unlikely to be enough. A structured set of parallel inquiries might offer more hope.

Means-tested housing allowances have played an increasingly important role in housing policies in a number of European countries in recent years. They have also provoked considerable controversy, particularly when associated with neo-liberal reforms. This has happened in West Germany, where a national scheme was introduced in 1965 as part of a reform programme involving widespread rent decontrol and a substantial reduction in ‘social housing’ expenditures. The discussion in this paper suggests that the new scheme was not very successful, either in preventing financial hardship or in providing a stimulus for house-building. Since 1965 there has been growing resistance to the idea of housing allowances as a primary instrument of housing policy, and the present government has favoured a different approach with the allowances complementing other more direct controls over the housing market.

Different interpretations of the role of housing allowances are examined in the section on France, and there is also discussion of controversial issues of a technical character. In an attempt to adapt aid closely to particular needs the French have developed extremely complex arrangements, which clearly create difficulties for administrators as well as potential recipients. There has also been conflict between an endeavour to use the allowances to improve housing standards and the aim of providing help for the poorest sections of the community.

During the last six years Britain has had a boom in priority area policies: educational priority areas, community development and community action projects, the urban programme, the Department of the Environment's six cities projects, the planners’ comprehensive development areas and general improvement areas, neighbourhood councils and (most recently) the Home Office Deprivation Unit. These and other initiatives (repeatedly concerned with ‘areas’, ‘communities’, ‘neighbourhoods’ and ‘urban’ problems) have been the talk of all concerned with social policies.

A welfare benefit concerns a ‘need’ which a society has decided ‘ought’ to be met. What match is there between the system of welfare which has been laid down by legislation, and the way in which the members of society who are the potential recipients conceive of it? If, as Titmuss has said, definitions of needs are the interdependent manifestations ‘first, of society's wish to survive as an organic whole and, secondly, of the expressed wish of all the people to assist the survival of some people,’ how are these two objectives related, and how do the concepts of need held by ‘all the people’ match those held by the ‘some’? How in practice is the ‘need’ defined, and how do individuals define their own needs?

The article deals with the geographical imbalance of medical manpower in general practice; it describes corrective policies employed in the NHS, some major administrative problems stemming from those policies, and the prospects under reorganization.

First, the problem is seen within the context of inequalities in the distribution of other health and welfare services in the United Kingdom and of medical manpower in other countries. The second section summarizes the three major strategies employed since 1948: the Medical Practices Committee, the Initial Practice Allowances and the Designated Area Allowance. Problems arising from these policies include the fragmentation of responsibility, the lack of agreed objectives and the haphazard nature of the geographical units within which restrictions and incentives operate. The final section deals with the opportunity, presented by the 1973 National Health Service Reorganisation Act, to restructure these unsatisfactory features of the administrative framework. It is feared that the impetus for change is in danger of being lost, and that the establishment of the new health authorities alongside the old, largely unaltered machinery will merely add to the fragmentation of responsibility, thus exacerbating the imbalance of resources.

The allocation System whereby students pass from school to university is examined, and empirical evidence reviewed to establish the extent to which it approximates to the rationalistic model predicted by official literature on university admissions. Data from surveys in schools and universities tend to show that decisions are not the outcome of logical evaluations of objective information, but of poorly understood social processes in which institutional constraints and popular stereotypes play a major part. Implications are discussed for the secondary school curriculum, for inequalities in the selection process and for developments in admissions policies in an expanding system of higher education.

One in six of the population is an old-age pensioner and everyone has the prospect of becoming one in their time. It is therefore unsurprising that pensions have been a subject of much political debate. There has, however, been little investigation of what people think about pensions. Politicians have tended to declare that pensions are too low but have in practice been constrained in raising them by their conception of the willingness, or unwillingness, of the working population to pay for higher pensions.

The casework method practised in social work is assessed from a sociological-structural perspective. Social workers are viewed as agents of social control who wield power and authority in order to change their clients' attitudes and behaviour. It is argued that the main weaknesses of casework as a technique for personal change lie in its dyadic structure and isolation from the client's real-life environment. These characteristics impede the operation of the basic processes through which control and influence are generally accepted. It is proposed to substitute small groups of clients for the one-to-one casework setting, to link the treatment situation to real-life experiences, and to emphasize learning processes. It is believed that this restructuring of the worker-client encounter will increase the effectiveness of social work therapeutic intervention.