The National Council of Social Service is the major voluntary body in the United Kingdom responsible for social welfare. Its paper on the future of social policy in the European Community was submitted to the EEC Commission by its International Committee, after widespread consultation with a large number of national and local voluntary agencies in the UK. The paper outlines the Community's present approach to social policy. The aims of its Social Action Programme are by no means valueless, but it has still tended to regard the human being chiefly as an instrument of economic production. Consequently, while the Community may be relevant to industry and governments, it has little attraction for the public at large. If the Community is to have any real meaning as a community it will need to give much greater priority to social policy, and to achieving social justice throughout the member states. Furthermore it should pursue policies which will strengthen the sense of Community identity and citizenship and should introduce greater democracy within its institutional structure and operations. The paper recommends a number of specific measures within the broad field of social policy which might achieve these goals. These include proposals concerning employment, working conditions, income maintenance and distribution, migrant workers, health and social services, consumer and environment policy, overseas development and institutional democracy.

This article is intended to extend our previous analysis (Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 2, Part 3, July 1973) of explanations of the development of social policy. Some problems associated with the preparation of historical accounts are examined and we proceed to review the value of international comparisons of welfare developments as a device for avoiding some of these problems. We look at some examples of studies that have utilized international comparisons and the problems involved in attempting such studies. Our conclusion is that the use of the comparative method is valuable, not because it enables us to get any nearer the truth about welfare developments, but rather because the range of plausible explanations that it will generate makes us more aware of the variety of perspectives on welfare activities that can exist and of the multitude of value-systems that are embodied in these perspectives.

This paper takes up three particular themes in the historical development of the present pattern of social service provision in the United Kingdom and argues that existing accounts are somewhat misleading in their treatment of these issues. The three themes are the relationship between collectivism and individualism in social policy legislation and practice, the influence of centre and periphery in British political life and, to a lesser extent, the occupational roles available to women in the social services. These questions are examined through a study of the history of health visiting. It is argued that the fluctuating fortunes of the health visiting service allow us to see more clearly the changing influence of collectivist and individualist philosophies on government policy and the degrees to which definitions of problems and possible solutions have either been imported from the national periphery to the national centre or vice versa. Insufficient attention has been given to the defeat of metropolitan individualist philosophies by the peripherally-based public health movement at the beginning of the twentieth century and to the conditions which have led to their subsequent re-emergence and the waning influence of collectivist approaches.