The welfare state – in Britain and all the Western world – was after 1945 an incarnation of the politics of repentance for an ideology that had reduced a continent to ruin. Racism, for centuries the animating principle of European empires, had been returned in the mid-20th century to the continent that had been pleased to call itself the cradle, not simply of one civilization, but of Civilization itself. After the time of bones and ashes, Europe needed to cleanse itself of the taint of racism, and present itself as the supreme model of humanitarian values.
Never Again: the welfare state was a pledge that the malignant fantasy that had laid waste much of Europe would be vanquished for ever; wild flowers would burst through the concrete sites of grief and desolation that scarred the continent. The living would no longer be left to make their own individual accommodation with the forces of wealth and power; they would be sheltered by universal welfare, available at the point of need, for which no justification would be required.
