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:
“Every country has its own constitution; ours is absolutism moderated by assassination.”
—Anonymous Russian. Quoted in Count Münster, Political Sketches of the State of Europe 1814-1867 (1868)
“The idealist’s programme of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“For the people in government, rather than the people who pester it, Washington is an early-rising, hard-working city. It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)