Peter Townsend reached 80 in April 2008. We thought it a particularly appropriate way to mark his outstanding contribution to the subjects of social policy and sociology by reprinting this essay published 50 years ago in the New Statesman. The title, ‘A Society for People’, identifies the dominant theme, not just for this paper, but for Peter's whole career.

Those who grew up in the war, as I did, could not fail to be aware of the lowering of social barriers and of the popular support for social reform. Whether by eating in communal restaurants and sleeping in air raid shelters, accommodating evacuees and the victims of the, blitz, joining in firewatching and civil defence, doing holiday work on farms or serving in the armed forces, people were obliged to meet, and get to know, many others of different class, occupation and background. They had a common interest and a common purpose. One of my most vivid memories is of the shock felt by the middle classes in Black-pool upon the arrival of families evacuated from the Liverpool slums. As in many other places, people came to understand for the first time how the other half lived, and what the years of unemployment had wrought. Here were two nations confronted.

In October 2008 in the UK Incapacity Benefit (IB) (the main income replacement benefit for sick and disabled claimants) was replaced by the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for new claimants. Drawing upon recent work on the retrenchment of welfare benefits and services this paper examines the context for the changes, the marketisation of the job placement services for ESA claimants and the extension of conditionality to sick and disabled benefit claimants. The paper argues that the introduction of ESA is a good example of the retrenchment of benefits for the majority of sick and disabled people. The paper concludes that ESA can be interpreted as creating a group of disadvantaged people through which the private sector can profit.

The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy (TPS) has been implemented in England since 1999 and has two aims: to halve under 18s conceptions; and to reduce the risk of social exclusion among young mothers. The TPS portrays young motherhood as problematic, the cause of poor outcomes. Yet, the problematisation of teenage fertility has been contested, especially by qualitative researchers who have demonstrated that early motherhood can be experienced positively. This research is discussed here, as are findings from a small-scale study in three English locations, where teenage mothers reported good experiences of parenthood. The discrepancy between these accounts of motherhood and policy is considered.

This paper explores the impact of the decision to make the Working Tax Credit (WTC) payable via the employer, until March 2006. A unique survey shows the unequal distribution of compliance costs across firms and industries. It also suggests that the arrangement had some unanticipated results, and may have damaged the effectiveness of the WTC. Some employers' compliance costs may have been shifted to employees. So from a social policy perspective administration is policy – the delivery system affects outcomes. However the switch to payments through HMRC from April 2006 does not remove all compliance costs from employers.

This paper explores understandings of gender equality within the context of work/family balance strategies embedded in the European Employment Strategy (EES). The article compares developments in childcare provision with parental leave drawing the conclusion that while increasing childcare provision is a clear priority for the European Employment Strategy, parental leave and other measures aimed at balancing time spent on paid work and unpaid care are not given equal concern. Work/family balance strategies are primarily intended to facilitate the engagement of young mothers in the labour market by offering public childcare provision; this is done at the cost of not exploring other more far-reaching and complex understandings of the work/family conflict.

Recognition of the effects of social, economic, political and cultural conditions on mental health and the personal, social and economic costs of a growing global mental health crisis (WHO, 2001; EC, 2005) mean that mental health and well-being are a current feature of social policy agendas at UK, European and world levels, with debate increasingly becoming framed in human rights terms. In the UK, policy drives to address social exclusion and health inequalities as key social and economic rights issues have encompassed attention to mental health and distress (DoH, 2003; Social Exclusion Unit, 2004) and mental health has been identified as a priority area for the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (Diamond, 2007; DRC, 2007). At the European level too, rights-based social policy approaches to promoting social cohesion (European Committee for Social Cohesion, 2004) and policy directives on the ‘right to health’ (Commission of the European Communities, 2007) have been centrally concerned with mental health and well-being, and have been accompanied by a European strategy on mental health for the EU (EC, 2005). At a global level, the World Health Organisation has declared enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health to be a fundamental human right (WHO, 2006). It has launched a new appeal on mental health which draws attention to the impact of human rights violations and cites social isolation, poor quality of life, stigma and discrimination as central issues for those with mental health needs (Dhanda and Narayan, 2007; Horton, 2007; WHO, 2007).

This historically situated, UK-based review of New Labour's human rights and mental health policy following the 1998 Human Rights Act (HRA) and 2007 Mental Health Act (MHA), draws on Klug's identification of three waves of human rights. These occurred around the American and French Revolutions, after World War II, and following the collapse of state communism in 1989, and the article assesses impacts on mental health policy up to and including the New Labour era. It critiques current equality and rights frameworks in mental health and indicates how they might be brought into closer alignment with third wave principles.

Human rights may be categorised as belonging to ‘three generations’: political, social and ‘solidarity’ rights. This paper considers this schema theoretically, deploying the example of the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement in Britain in support of its central claims. Psychiatric survivors comprise groups of psychiatric patients who have campaigned both for political and social rights in addition to a singular form of ‘right’, which is referred to here as ‘experiential’. The paper clarifies the meaning of the ‘experiential right’ and, drawing upon aspects of social theory, considers how it is to be understood in the context of the ‘three generations’ schema.

This paper examines conflicts in polices in England and Wales pertaining to the demand for alternative, non-medical crisis support for those experiencing ‘psychosis’. We examine the limitations of current treatment, policy and legislative frameworks in supporting these demands. In particular, we focus on the limitations of prevailing conceptualisations of ‘human rights’, ‘social inclusion’ and ‘recovery’. These concepts, we argue, are embedded within a broader treatment framework which renders medication as mandatory and all other treatment modalities as inherently subsidiary, and a broader policy framework which is complicit with bio-medical orthodoxies of ‘mental illness’ and prioritises treatment compliance and compulsion. Therefore, in order to advance a ‘human rights’ approach to mental health policy, we argue that reigning orthodoxies inherent within policy and practice must be explicitly challenged to open up spaces for the availability of alternatives.

In the UK, participation in decision-making is increasingly being viewed as a right for users of mental health services. Yet research repeatedly finds a policy implementation gap in this area. Drawing on a localised, qualitative study involving three mental health service user/community groups, this article frames this issue in terms of a ‘politics of recognition’. It demonstrates how whilst government user involvement policies officially attempt to recognise users and their voices, they simultaneously reconstitute failures of recognition in terms of status subordination and a disqualified identity for service users, thereby obstructing participatory parity and amounting to a dereliction of the core principles underlying human rights.

Debates about the ban on smoking in public places have centred on the right to self-determination and privacy versus the right to health. This paper addresses the issue of smoking in relation to mental health and focuses on the right to dignity and respect. The public health agenda on smoking has involved the mobilisation of stigma to persuade people to give up. The paper argues that this strategy risks adding to the stigma and process of ‘othering’ that many mental health service users already experience and is also likely to be ineffective in reducing smoking rates, particularly among heavy smokers.

Contributors to this themed section have referred to a range of sources on mental health and human rights, particularly those offering social policy and sociological perspectives. The sources below offer an elaboration of some key citations and some additional references and web sites on this theme which may be of particular interest to a social policy readership.