ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Bureau’s vigorous, if somewhat muddle-headed, attack on traditional party policy in the early 1930s. The New Fabian Research Bureau (NFRB) had already designed its programme of research and published its first pamphlet before the political and financial crisis of 1931. The NFRB was a hive of organizational activity throughout the spring of 1931. The socialization committee members examined an enormous number of specific industries to study the case and the appropriate form for their public control. G. D. H. Cole’s original research design addressed redistributional issues by posing the question ‘How far is it an essential part of socialist policy to promote more equal distribution of incomes by raising real wages, by development of the social services?’ The wages committee started work immediately, laying out an ambitious review of wage movements, cost of living, industry wage rates, rationalization schemes, wage-fixing machinery and union attitudes to new technology.
