The Politics of Preference

This article explores relationships between masculinity and welfare in post-First World War Britain through an analysis of unemployment relief. While their service to the nation entitled them to government benefits, veterans of the First World War fit into a context of already-existing unemployment relief schemes and already-established assumptions about who was deserving of state assistance, which privileged married men with children. The politics of preference surrounding unemployment relief reveal competing principles of deservedness connected to different models of masculinity, the breadwinner and the soldier, the married man and the single man. There was general agreement that ex-servicemen had a significant call on the state's resources, but manhood above all meant the ability to provide for wives and children, which resulted in the marginalization of the claims of single men and the endangering of the principle of universal entitlement for ex-soldiers.