Knights, knaves, pawns and queens: attitudes to behaviour in
postwar Britain
John Welshman
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2007;61:95-97
The choice agenda is currently one of the most prominent in
public policy. One of its main architects, Julian Le Grand, has
used the metaphors of knights, knaves, pawns and queens to
characterise changing attitudes to questions of motivation and
behaviour among public servants and service users. He has said,
for example, that, in the immediate postwar period, public
servants were perceived as public-spirited altruists (or
knights), whereas service users were seen as passive (or pawns).
It was only in the mid-1980s that public servants came to be
seen as essentially self-interested (knaves) and service users
came to be regarded as consumers (queens). However, this highly
influential model has undergone remarkably little critical
scrutiny to date. This article explores the debate over
transmitted deprivation in the 1970s to provide a historically
grounded piece of analysis to explore the accuracy and utility
of these metaphors. It challenges Le Grand’s arguments in three
respects. Firstly, a concern with behaviour and agency went much
broader than social security fraud. Secondly, the metaphor of
pawns is inadequate for characterising attitudes towards the
poor and service users. Finally, Le Grand’s periodisation of the
postwar era also has serious flaws.
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