Records of Cabinet Committees, 1916 to 1939

Division within CAB

1914-1939

Records of the Committee of Civil Research and Economic Advisory Council are in: CAB 58, and those of the Home Affairs Committee are in CAB 26. Those of most other Cabinet committees in this period are in CAB 27, but some will be found in other series:

• Post War Priority and Demobilisation Committees, 1918 to 1919: CAB 33
• War Trade Advisory Committee, 1914 to 1919: CAB 39
• War Priorities Committee, 1917 to 1919: CAB 40.

Selected files of the Cabinet Secretariat are in CAB 21 (to 1973) and CAB 104 (to 1951).

Public Record(s)

English

• Cabinet, 1919-1939
• War Cabinet, 1916-1919

6 series

Topics

Trade and commerce

In December 1916 the War Cabinet secretariat was made responsible for the secretarial work of all Cabinet committees. Previously, apart from the Committee of Imperial Defence and a few other committees operating between 1914 and 1916 which enjoyed the services of the CID secretariat, no systematic records of Cabinet committees had been kept. With the advent of the War Cabinet there was a considerable proliferation of committees at Cabinet and departmental level. Some of the earlier ones have left no records, since the development of a fully fledged Committee Section in the Cabinet Office occurred rather slowly between 1916 and 1918.

In the inter-war period most Cabinet committees were of an ad hoc nature, appointed to deal with some immediate problem and with terms of reference requiring them to report to the Cabinet.

The only Committee with equivalent status to that of the Committee of Imperial Defence (that is, set up by Treasury minute) was the Committee of Civil Research set up in 1925, which became the Economic Advisory Council in 1930.

Otherwise the only Cabinet committee which had a recognised continuing existence was the Home Affairs Committee established in 1918.

Between the establishment of the secretariat in 1916 and the outbreak of war in 1939, some 900 committees and sub-committees were formed.