George R. Boyer. The Winding Road to the Welfare State

The focus of George R. Boyer’s The Winding Road to the Welfare State: Economic Insecurity and Social Welfare Policy in Britain is narrower than the main title suggests, and it is better indicated by the subtitle. His concern is economic insecurity, more specifically “workers’ methods for coping with income insecurity” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (4). He is excluding the wider range of welfare policies, and above all the history of the National Health Service, and also the ways that middle-class families dealt with their endemic economic insecurity. Nor does the book always deal with Britain. He admits in passing that the Scottish poor law did not provide support for able-bodied men, but he does not discuss the distinctive pattern of relief north of the border. With these caveats about the coverage of the book, it provides excellent material on income insecurity of workers and the responses through state action and self-help.

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