Indulgence

This chapter discusses the counter-reformation orchestrated by the Chamberlain-Bradbury Committee. The traditional view is that the Chamberlain-Bradbury Committee largely ignored industry and labor. Empowered by the chants of finance and enchanted by the chorus of intelligentsia, these elites are said to have overruled the venal interests of the UK's producers. In fact, the opposite was true on both counts. As with the Cunliffe Committee, the members of the Chamberlain-Bradbury Committee were far more reflective and nuanced than we have appreciated. Indeed, even the greatest exponents of the orthodoxy — Arthur Cecil Pigou and John Bradbury — had begun to rethink the gold standard in light of John Maynard Keynes's devastating critique. They did this even as the representatives of UK industry vigorously cast their lot behind the agenda of the City of London.