Month: November 2021

During the Vikings‘ explorations spanning N.America to the Middle East, Britain did not go unnoticed and in fact proved quite a draw for some 250 years until the Norman Conquest of 1066. ‘Viking’ is a later name applied to these Scandinavian adventurers from across the North Sea. Their first incursions, in the 790s, were violent thefts and murders at soft targets ~ the monasteries of N.England, Scotland and Ireland.

The sight of the distinctive Viking longships powering their way towards shore became a regular portent of pillage and upheaval each summer, until they eventually decided to settle here in the 850s. They took control of various kingdoms in the upper part of Britain, roughly north of a line from London to Bedford. Wessex in the south stood firm and King Athelstan defeated them in 927, thereby uniting the country of England.

Eirik Bloodaxe (typical Viking nickname ~ others include Bluetooth, Ironside, Skullsplitter, Boneless, Red, Buttered-Bread) had briefly retaken Northumbria but was killed in 954. Back for more in 1013, the Vikings now tussled for total rule and for a while had the Danish King Cnut (or ‘Canute’) on the English throne, in 1016-35. Naturally, they left their mark culturally, linguistically and in the family trees of many Britons.

(Image [cropped]: alh1 at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Sir William Beveridge (1879-1963) took many years to develop his plan for social reform as detailed in ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’ (1942), later known as ‘The Beveridge Report‘. His conviction is illustrated by the Report’s declaration that the main objective of any government should be to ensure “the happiness of the common man”. He saw the post-WW2 period as the ideal time to enact a redistribution of national income such that a person’s dignity would be upheld, not demeaned by dependence on hand-outs.

Beveridge was born in ‘British India’, excelled at the University of Oxford and joined the Civil Service before becoming a distinguished Director at the London School of Economics, during 1919-37. He then returned to a position at Oxford and his mid-war Report was a boon to public spirit. It proposed a plan whereby small weekly contributions (‘social insurance’) would be heavily subsidised by government to fund a system of welfare benefits for the unemployed, old and sick, with free medical treatment and children’s allowances.

Beveridge became a Liberal MP in 1944 but it was a Labour government that broadly implemented his recommendations for assistance “from cradle to grave” in tackling the “five giants” of Want, Ignorance, Idleness, Squalor and Disease.

(Image of Sir William Beveridge in 1943: Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)