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This paper considers the origins and traces the history of the Social Fund, an ideologically-motivated social policy departure of the Thatcher era. It identifies the controversy, in research communities amongst others, which surrounded the establishment of the Fund, and considers the evidence of recurring difficulties in its practical operation over a thirty-year period. It then turns to the Coalition administration in Westminster’s decision to divest itself of responsibility for key parts of the Fund, devolving such obligations to local authorities in England, the Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Wales. The paper sets out a comparison of the approaches being developed to discharge the Fund’s prior responsibilities in the three nations. It concludes that the essential policy thrust lies in a determination to roll back central state obligations in poverty relief and income maintenance which had hitherto been accepted by all post-war administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Class has become the social condition that dare not it speak its name in the devolved Scotland. This is despite the persistence of marked class divisions and structured inequalities within contemporary Scottish society. We critically examine the most empirically sophisticated and coherent analysis of social class in Scotland - that provided by 'the Edinburgh school' of social scientists, particularly their claim that Scotland is now a prosperous, 'professional society' where only a small but significant minority are trapped in poverty. This paper further considers the extent to which 'devolution', and the dominant representations to which it has given rise, serve to generate a series of other myths in which class is both devalued but simultaneously mobilized in the negative portrayal of some of the most disadvantaged sections of the working class. Against an emerging, home-grown view of 'New Scotland' as a prosperous 'Smart, Successful Scotland', poverty and wealth inequalities continue to be a necessary feature of the division of labour. In Scotland, as elsewhere, class remains the pivot-point around which much of social policy is encoded and enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of ‘intergenerational cultures of worklessness’ has become influential in UK politics and policy, and been used to explain contemporary worklessness and to justify welfare reforms. Workless parents are said to pass on to their children attitudes and behaviours which inculcate ‘welfare dependency’. In its strongest version, politicians and welfare practitioners talk confidently of ‘three generations of families where no-one has ever worked’; even though no study, bar this one, has investigated whether such families actually exist. Solid evidence for intergenerational cultures of worklessness is elusive so this study tested the idea via interviews with twenty families in Glasgow and Middlesbrough that had been long-term workless. Theories of intergenerational cultures of worklessness feel like ‘zombie arguments’ – resistant to evidence and social scientific efforts to kill them off. Regardless, the findings of this critical case study are offered as a fresh batch of ammunition with which to try to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Lorimer Halliday (1897–1983) pioneered the development of the concept of psychosocial medicine in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. He worked in Glasgow, first as a public health doctor, and then as part of the corporatist National Health Insurance scheme. Here he learned about links between poverty, the social environment, emotional stress and psychological and physical ill-health, and about statistical tools for making such problems scientifically visible. The intellectual development of his methodologically and epistemologically integrated medicine – a hybrid of biomedical and psychological approaches – was embedded in the context of this practice with its particular medical culture and socio-economic circumstances. Halliday’s ideas are part of the wider, heterogeneous turn towards medical modernism and holism within mainstream medicine in Britain, western Europe and the United States in the inter-war period, and their evolution underlines the varied nature of contemporary anti-reductionist thinking in medicine. It also points to the diversity of the sources of holism and the many routes by which psychological and especially psychosocial discourses about health and illness entered professional and public arenas in Britain in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Scottish National Party’s election win in 2011 produced the first overall majority for any party since the Scottish Parliament’s inception in 1999, despite the proportional representation system that was supposed to prevent single party governments. This historic election has been followed by much discussion of how much further the powers of the Scottish Parliament could be extended and whether devolution would allow Scotland to have a superior welfare settlement. In this context policy divergence has been the major focus of the developing devolution debate but discussions about greater powers or even independence for the Parliament have increased significantly. They are often presented as a means to achieve a ‘better’ or more ‘fair’ society. This article argues that shortcomings in the steps towards fairness achieved under the current arrangements of devolution highlight the need for a far-reaching and innovative approach to social justice to be carried out alongside any further discussions of independence. Such an approach cannot be taken for granted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout Europe there is a view that social policy objectives can and should be achieved via the route of increased work participation. This is often fuelled by government assumptions that simultaneous progress on the employment and poverty front can be achieved. Employment activation and poverty reduction are central to the so-called active welfare state that lies at the heart of New Labour policies. In this article the relationship between devolution (another of New Labour's central policies) and active labour market policies is analysed. In particular a discussion of the decentralization of powers relating to employment is undertaken alongside an assessment of whether the 'social policy' focus of the devolved Scotland results in an effective integration of employment and poverty reduction policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The re-establishment of a Scottish parliament in Edinburgh in May 1999 has promised new and innovative developments in social policy. Focusing on poverty and social exclusion, this article considers the likelihood that the approach by the new Scottish parliament will represent a departure from the approach of the Westminster government. There is some expectation that Scotland's experience will be different given the distinctive political and cultural environment, but instead it is argued that the Scottish parliament is very much in tune with New Labour thinking in relation to poverty. The neglect of wider structural inequalities in wealth and income means that the Scottish parliament is unlikely to develop a radical approach which challenges existing structures of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]