Political and Economic Planning (PEP) was a British policy think tank, formed in 1931 in response to Max Nicholson's article A National Plan for Britain published in February of that year in Gerald Barry's magazine The Week-End Review.
The original members included Nicholson and Barry, the zoologist Julian Huxley, the agronomist Leonard Elmhirst, the financier Sir Basil Blackett, the civil servants Dennis Routh and Sir Henry Bunbury, the research chemist Michael Zvegintzov, and Israel Sieff, a director of Marks & Spencer. Sieff was Chairman in the 1930s, followed by Elmhirst in 1939 and by Nicholson in 1953. It was a non-governmental planning organisation financed by corporations.
This prolific organisation was influential in the formation of the National Health Service, World War II and post-war planning, and the development of the African colonies. After the war it shared the offices of The Nature Conservancy in Belgrave Square, London, producing reports such as Opportunities in Industry (1957) and Advisory Committees in British Government (1960)
In 1978 PEP merged with the Centre for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), and became the Policy Studies Institute (PSI).
Famous quotes containing the words political, economic and/or planning:
“There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one’s enemies as if they may one day become one’s friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)