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What was the impact of the Second World War on the development of the welfare state? Did Attlee's pioneering post-war Labour governments create the welfare state and a socialist society? This title provides an account of the British welfare state after 1940. It re-examines commonly held assumptions about the post-war welfare state.

New Labour's approach to paid work has much in common with older Labour traditions. New Labour continues to accept that paid work is the most effective means of securing economic and social well-being, and that work incentives and obligations should be maintained. However, New Labour's enthusiasm for the market and its more circumspect approach towards collectivism represent significant changes of direction. By adopting a work first welfare strategy, New Labour has downplayed the structural causes of worklessness and undermined the citizenship rights of many of those who are currently disconnected from the workplace.

C.A.R. Crosland (1956) The Future of Socialism, Jonathan Cape, London.Donald Sassoon (1997), One Hundred Years of Socialism, HarperCollins London. (First published by I.B.Tauris in 1996).John Callaghan (2000), The Retreat of Social Democracy, Manchester University Press, Manchester.Between them these three books provide an excellent overview of the theory and practice of social democracy as it has twisted and turned over the past century. As Sassoon reminds us in his magisterial review of the West European left, revisionism of one kind or another has been a constant feature of socialist discourse. The key question has always been whether such revisions have helped to bring about the transformation of capitalism (or, perhaps more realistically, its humanisation) or, in contrast, helped to secure its long-term survival. The first, and arguably the most controversial, revisionism of social democratic thought occurred in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century.