Abstract
The historiography of the political and intellectual origins of the Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services – or Beveridge Report, named after William Beveridge, the Chairman of the Commission- was chiefly displayed in the document itself. Published in 1942 and highly edited, the white paper inherently exposed a political and intellectual review of British social security.
The political evolution of the schemes of social insurance and assistance –including the Beveridge Report- was mainly presented as a response to practical political and community problems which synthesis was the Welfare State originated in the Beveridge Report: a universal and comprehensive State insurance of social assistance. However, the intentions behind social legislations were discussed; historians such as Bruce Maurice (1968) and Derek Fraser (2003) disagreed on the causes of evolution. Maurice pointed that the Welfare State had grown out of the needs of the English people and out of the struggle for social justice whereas Fraser advanced an erratic and pragmatic response to practical individual and community problems of an industrial society.
Regarding the intellectual evolution of the social policy, it appeared that political and economical problems catalyzed social changes firstly originated by intellectuals and next supported by politicians and the community influenced by intellectuals' publications. Jose Harris (May, 1992) and John Offer (2006) presented the intellectual framework of social policy as previous to political and popular frameworks. Social-reform literature of the 18th century was moralist and utilitarianist (Smith, 1759; Bentham, 1789), and the New Poor Law set up in 1834 resulted from and in the intellectual trends.
