# Claude Guillebaud

Claude William Guillebaud, CBE (2 July 1890 – 23 August 1971) was a British economist and public servant. A member of the Faculty of Economics at Cambridge University during the height of its reputation, he was noted for his analyses of the inter-war German economy and the publication of a variorum edition of the Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall. He was also a chairman of several industrial committees and Courts of Inquiry in the years following World War II.

## Early life and academic career

Claude Guillebaud (which he maintained should be pronounced to rhyme with "keel-bow") was born on 2 July 1890 at The Rectory, Yatesbury, Wiltshire, to the Rev. Ernest Delabere Guillebaud (1856–1907) and Mabel Louisa Marshall (1850–1912), the younger sister of Alfred Marshall. When a young woman, Mabel Marshall had fallen in love with a subaltern in the army, but was prevented from marrying him by her "tyrant" father. Claude Guillebaud later related in a letter to John Maynard Keynes that, after she chose to marry Ernest Guillebaud, then a young Anglican priest, "the old gentleman [Mabel's father] hated him and made things as difficult as possible for him, solely because he had married my mother."
Like his twin brother, Walter, Claude was educated at Repton School, the Victoria University of Manchester and St John's College, Cambridge, where (unlike his twin) he elected to study economics. This proved to be an excellent choice, for Claude won first-class awards in both parts of the tripos and received the Adam Smith Prize for best undergraduate essay. In 1915 he was made a fellow of St John's, becoming a supervisor in economics following his return from civil service duties during World War I. A director of studies from 1935, he continued to teach economics at the college until his retirement at the age of 66, and also assumed the role of senior tutor in 1952, succeeding Sir James Wordie. At university level, he was appointed a lecturer in economics in 1926, Girdlers Lecturer in 1945, and reader in economics in 1956. David A. Collard, writing about the Faculty as it was in the 1920s, considers Guillebaud to have been one of the "serious economists" among the teaching staff, alongside Keynes, A. C. Pigou, G. F. Shove and Frederick Lavington.

## Works

Until the 1930s, Guillebaud was a Cambridge don with no public profile. His academic interests lay primarily in matters concerning industrial relations, wages and employment. His first book, on German wages councils, deepened his preoccupation with these topics as well as reorienting his studies towards post-imperial Germany, but did not reach beyond a narrow academic audience. This was not the case with his next book, The Economic Recovery of Germany (1939), which unfashionably and contentiously argued that Hitler's Third Reich, for all its faults, recovered more effectively from the Great Depression than its rivals. As stated in his college obituary, the book's publication on the eve of war "gave rise to some misunderstanding of his own position, in spite of a clear disclaimer in the preface of sympathy with the political tenets of National Socialism". Any ensuing unpopularity was eventually forgotten, however, and Guillebaud's subsequent reputation for intellectual honesty and willingness to state uncomfortable truths rested at least partly on the merits of this work.
During the war, Guillebaud published a slim volume on social policy in Nazi Germany, and after it he took on the role of editing the Cambridge Economic Handbooks following the death of Maynard Keynes. Arguably, however, his most significant contribution to the study of economics in the post-war era was his publication, in 1961, of a two-volume variorum edition of his uncle Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. Embarking on this task at the behest of Keynes, it took Guillebaud twenty-seven years to complete this work, tracing the book's development from first edition to last.

## Public service

From 1946 onwards, Guillebaud maintained an increasingly important position in British public life, taking on roles as an arbitrator in wage disputes in a number of different industries, as chairman of Courts of Inquiry or special committees, and as a member or chairman of Wages Boards. Most notably, he was chair of both the Enquiry into the Cost of the National Health Service (known as the Guillebaud Report; 1953–56) and the Committee of Inquiry on Railway Pay (1958–60). It was in this latter capacity that he attracted some approving press attention: The Times, in a short summary of his career, referred to him as a man of "humility, patience and good humour", with the ability to "withdraw and consider the problem from a scholarly distance." Such academic objectivity led him to conclude – perhaps surprisingly to those who considered him an 'Establishment' figure – that the railwaymen had "genuine grounds for complaint" about their wages, supporting a rise of 5 per cent with the scope for a still higher increase.
Guillebaud's last public role, in 1967, was as the author of an economic survey on the economy of the Falkland Islands, which led him to move to Stanley for a month at the request of Governor Haskard. He made many recommendations, advocating (amongst other things) an expansion of the numbers of cattle kept on sheep farms, an increase in profits taxation, and wide-reaching improvements in education provision at both primary and secondary level. He finished his report with a warning for the future:
   I wish to express my personal belief and faith in the viability of the Falkland Islands' economy. But resolute action will be needed if a situation, which today is merely somewhat precarious, is to be prevented from reaching a stage when it becomes irreparable. It is not too much to say that the whole future of the Colony is now at stake.

## Personal life

Guillebaud married Marie-Thérèse (Pauline) Prunner, an Austrian national, in 1918; they had two daughters. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1948 New Year Honours lists. He died in Cambridge following a prolonged illness on 23 August 1971.

## Selected publications

* The Works Council: A German Experiment in Industrial Democracy (1928)
* (contributor) Cambridge History of the British Empire, 2nd vol. (1929)
* The Economic Recovery of Germany, 1933–1938 (1939)
* The Social Policy of Nazi Germany (1941)
* The Wages Council System in Great Britain (1958)
* Economic Survey of the Sisal Industry of Tanganyika (1959)
* Art and Economics in Cambridge (1960)
* (editor) Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall (1961)
* Wage Determination and Wages Policy, 2nd ed. (1967)
* The Role of the Arbitrator in Industrial Wage Disputes (1970)