In this review of the changing relationship between social policy and social justice I will be concerned with three main areas of debate. Firstly, I wish to attempt a clarification of the moral ideals of social welfare which find expression in those criteria of social justice by which people in similar states of need are treated differently. My second concern is to review and redefine what constitutes the social division of welfare in Britain today. Thirdly, I wish to explore the extent to which these ideals of social welfare complement or conflict with one another.

Studies of the American ‘War on Poverty’ have concentrated on the period 1964–8 during which it attracted much attention due, firstly, to its optimistic claims to abolish poverty and, secondly, to the militant tactics used by some of its participants. Little note has been given to the years 1969–71, yet during this period significant changes occurred. In the Spring term of 1972 I was able to visit a number of the programme's projects and to study at the headquarters of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Having had access to documents with a limited circulation I am thus able to describe developments in the later period in a way which, to my knowledge, has not been published previously in Britain.

A welfare benefit concerns a ‘need’ which a society has decided ‘ought’ to be met. What match is there between the system of welfare which has been laid down by legislation, and the way in which the members of society who are the potential recipients conceive of it? If, as Titmuss has said, definitions of needs are the interdependent manifestations ‘first, of society's wish to survive as an organic whole and, secondly, of the expressed wish of all the people to assist the survival of some people,’ how are these two objectives related, and how do the concepts of need held by ‘all the people’ match those held by the ‘some’? How in practice is the ‘need’ defined, and how do individuals define their own needs?