WILLIAM TELLS IT HOW IT IS

The main reason for Labour’s landslide victory in the postwar general election is down to its, better known as the . The report was so widely published that it actually became a bestseller. Created by liberal economist William Beveridge, it proposed widespread social reform in order to combat what he termed “Five Giants” on the road to reconstruction. These giants were “Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness”. In his report Beveridge described a “cradle to grave” approach to social reform after his pre-war work for a charitable organisation convinced him that only through such reform could poverty and social inequality be eradicated. The Acts that the Labour government introduced to try to achieve this were the Family Allowances Act (1945), National Insurance Act (1946), National Health Service Act (1946), Pensions Increase Act (1947) and the Landlord And Tenant Rent Control Act (1949).