Beveridge, William H.

Beveridge, William H. (1879–1963). Social reformer. Educated at Oxford, Beveridge joined Toynbee Hall, in London's East End, where he met Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Impressed by social-insurance arrangements in Prussia, he used his position as a leader-writer for the Morning Post to press the case for comprehensive welfare provision in Britain. In 1908 he joined the Board of Trade and played a major part in drafting the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909 and the National Insurance Act of 1911.

In 1919 Beveridge became director of the London School of Economics (LSE), which the Webbs had founded. While firmly establishing LSE's reputation in the social sciences, his inclination to autocracy caused inevitable clashes; in 1937 he resigned, to become master of University College, Oxford. At the outbreak of war in 1939 Beveridge hoped to be put in charge of wartime manpower administration. But his unhappy relationship with the trade unions in the First World War (he had helped to draft legislation restricting wartime collective bargaining) ruled this out. Instead he was asked to chair an inquiry into post-war social services. His two reports on social insurance (1942) and full employment (1944) formed the basis of the Labour government's welfare legislation in the later 1940s. He was given a peerage in 1946.

Geoffrey Alderman