Middle‐age — the in‐vogue industrial injury

Social policy, it used to be said, is about children and pensioners; the middle‐aged can look after themselves. They sit in the seats of power, they have secure jobs and well‐established homes, and their financial position is usually easier than that either of families with growing children or of pensioners. Disasters can happen in middle age as at other times — widowerhood, physical break‐down, long‐term unemployment — but on the whole these have the look of comfortable people, well settled and problem‐free.