The families that the Tories conveniently forget — battered by their social and economic policies. Violence against women and children Households: by type Great '1961 1980 % % One person - under retirement age IN PREPARATION Tank) produced a radical list proposals for welfare state.
These proposals before a committee Cabinet ministers (all men) were to refine them to provide the strategic backdrop manifesto. Many of the proposals deal with the strengthening of the family.
According to the report in the Guardian (17.2.83) they include: • Women couraging mothers Encouraging families - in the widest sense to reassume responsibilities taken on by the state, for example, the responsibility for the disabled, elderly, unemployed 16 year olds'. • Parental rights and responsibilities. Encourage more parental involvement in schools and find 'ways of encouraging the development of children... into self-reliant, responsible capable, enterprising and fulfilled adults'.
• Training children. Train children to manage their pocket money and encourage banks and schools to look for further ways change the culture so that business and wealth creation become more acceptable.
• Encouraging private social needs.
net for welfare needs, encourage voluntary contributions to both state and voluntary services by permitting PAYE deductions for charitable consolidate and extend use of surrogate families.
• Caring for the elderly.
and benefit allowance to see if families for the It possesses of restructuring the Ferdinand were put Margaret of senior who depth in Family.
for the Tory their families. En- ch. to stay at home.
is within the family.
beer development, limiting, the test of time, savings;
Opponents provision of Define minimum safety antagonism purposes, bring abour Adjust tax society.
Make parents Consider too much underlines by the Tories.
sophy was keep her wage.
it is to strengthen This towards redistribution archiell "The family has been the foundation for every society known to history.
the strength and resilience not least in adversity. Loyalty to family ranks highest of all, higher than loyalty Mount, head of Thatcher's personal policy unit, has explained these ideas in some This The Subversive Mount's argument rests on four main planks. Firstly, that the nuclear family is the universal family form. Secondly, that the values of the family are for individualism as against the col lectivism of socialists or even the churThirdly, that the family Is subversive because it has always fought a battle against those forces which attemp ted to supplant it. Finally, he suggests that the main source of power and control for working class men and women Cursorily dismissing any evidence to the contrary, Mount argues that the present family form is universal and has constant factor in only qualifying this by his conclusions Western civilisation and to the last 1000 years! But not only has this institution stood , Mount tells us, but it has positively resisted all challenges.
The family is subversive because it consistently puts private before communal good and thus is in permanent with those who wish to change in society as a whole — utopians, feminists, Marxists, Hitler and even Jesus Christ are opponents of the family says Mount.
'It is the essence of marriage that it is private and apart from the rest of "selfishness" "exclusiveness" is not its undertone but its heart and soul.' But on the other hand fraternity permeates both the Christian and Marxist hope'S For Mount such ideologies place emphasis the public sphere of life and devalue the private sphere and achievements within it: they obsessed with economics politics and ignore the power of natural ties such as love and caring. For him the family endures because it is unaffected by political and economic developwelfare state now so bitterly attacked At the core of Beveridge's philo the notion that married women would stay at home and that a man's earnings should be sufficient to - the concept of the family Income gap concept was buttressed by three tenets. First, that the aim of the welfare state was to provide aid and help to individual families, not a move social responsibility of wealth through benefits and tax concessions. Secondly 'the gap between incomes, in and out of work should be as large as possible' in other words state benefits were not intended and should not provide a living wage for their recipients.
Finally, the welfare state should be used to consolidate a traditional role for women. Indeed Beveridge's recom mendations were based on his division
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general election the Cabinet's Cen- tral Policy Review staff (the Think