Russell Frederick Bretherton
civil servant (1906-1991)
Russell Frederick Bretherton, (3 February 1906 – 11 January 1991), was a British economist, civil servant and amateur entomologist, particularly noted for his membership of the Spaak Committee in 1955.
Career up to 1955
Born in Gloucester in 1906 and educated at Clifton College, Russell Frederick Bretherton went to Wadham College, Oxford, as a history scholar in 1923. A First in History was followed by a First in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE), and the Webb Medley Scholarship, the major university award open to a budding economist. Elected a fellow of Wadham in 1928 he was Tutor in Economics until 1939. (Harold Wilson was one of his pupils.) His major work was "Public Investment and the Trade Cycle", written with F. A. Burchardt and S. G. Rutherford and published in 1941. Partly overtaken by the war the volume was nevertheless widely received as a model of its kind which would exert a salutary influence on public policy for years to come.
At the start of the Second World War, Bretherton was drafted into the Ministry of Supply as a temporary Civil Servant, and pursued a Whitehall career thereafter. In 1949 he was at the centre of the sterling crisis which led to the major devaluation of the pound. In 1955 he was an Under Secretary at the Board of Trade.
Events leading up to the Spaak Committee
At the time of the negotiations which eventually led to the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the UK Government was opposed to propositions which involved submerging any part of its sovereignty in new European political institutions.
“Russell Frederick Bretherton” enters the record as civil servant (1906-1991). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Russell, Frederick and Bretherton can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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