On Britain’s Return to the Gold Standard: was there a ‘Pigou-McKenna School’?

On 17 March 1925, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, held what is now regarded as a famous dinner with Sir Reginald McKenna, John Maynard Keynes, Sir John Bradbury and Sir Otto Niemeyer to discuss the merits, or otherwise, of Britain returning to the gold standard. Following that dinner, it has become popular to refer to the ‘Keynes-McKenna school’, with those two men being characterised as the ‘antagonists’ to the proposal for Britain to return to gold. However, in light of A. C. Pigou’s reading of McKenna’s evidence to the 1924-25 Chamberlain-Bradbury Committee, and Pigou’s September 1924 draft of that Committee’s report, it is evident that Pigou’s views on the subject largely aligned with those of McKenna. As a result, it is suggested in this paper that historical reference to the ‘Pigou-McKenna school’ as a school of thought that was supportive of Britain returning to the gold standard in principle, but not supportive of doing so prematurely, is a meaningful notion – and perhaps more meaningful than reference to the ‘Keynes-McKenna school’, which incorrectly implies that McKenna was opposed to Britain returning to the gold standard.