William Plowden

William Plowden is the Executive Director of the UK Harkness Fellowships.

Welfare in America

William Plowden, 11 July 1991

Like other beliefs and forms of behaviour to be met with in this country in the course of the present century, much of the Thatcherite approach to social policy was imported from the United States. Joe Rogaly commented recently that if under Mrs Thatcher 10 Downing Street was attached ‘by threads of steel’ to right-wing think tanks such as the Centre for Policy Studies, the latter were attached ‘by underwater cable’ to their counterparts in New York and Washington. If the steel threads endure under Mr Major, what messages will be coming down the underwater cables?

Draining the Think Tank

Martin Pugh, 24 November 1988

‘It’s a strange thing,’ said Harold Macmillan after becoming Prime Minister, ‘that I have now got the biggest job I ever had, and less help in doing it than I have ever...

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