The “contemporary setting” was the midst of total war and its social and economic circumstances. The flavour is recaptured in a 1942 newsreel. The effect on members of the armed forces is examined. The reaction of the coalition government and the responses of the Conservative party and of the Labour party showed divisions within each, documented in archives of party conferences, current periodical articles, and interviews conducted in 1992 with expert witnesses Lord Longford (Frank Pakenham) and Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg). Beveridge's Liberal party affiliation is reasserted and reviewed. The report's influence on other European countries merits further investigation, as many governments and forces in exile were in Britain in 1