Thirty-eight years ago, in a slightly kinder age, the unpredictable leftwing thinker Raymond Williams published his thoughts on the word "welfare". They occupied a quarter of a page. In England, he wrote, the word "was commonly used from C14" typically brusque Williams shorthand for the 14th century "to indicate happiness or prosperity". In the early 20th century, he went on, the word began to acquire an "extended sense of organised care and provision Thus welfare policy (1905); welfare centres (1917). The welfare state was first named in 1939."
In half a dozen terse sentences, almost in note form except for their precise language and punctuation, Williams sketched seven centuries of social progress. But he also gave a hint that it could be undone: "A subsidiary meaning" of welfare, he wrote, "usually derogatory in the recorded instances, was of merrymaking: 'such ryot and welfare and ydlenesse' (1470); 'wine and such welfare' (1577)". More than perhaps any other postwar British socialist, Williams could see the ancient but potent tools the English language provided for rightwing editorialists.