The People's Union for Economy (PUE) was a pressure group in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

in the early 1920s which campaigned for

retrenchment Retrenchment (french: retrenchment, an old form of ''retranchement'', from ''retrancher'', to cut down, cut short) is an act of cutting down or reduction, particularly of public expenditure. Political usage The word is familiar in its most general ...

in public expenditure. The PUE began as a parliamentary committee (founded in February 1921) with around sixty members of both Houses of Parliament. These included

Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...

Lord Robert Cecil Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, (14 September 1864 – 24 November 1958), known as Lord Robert Cecil from 1868 to 1923,As the younger son of a Marquess, Cecil held the courtesy title of "Lord". However, he ...

Lord Selborne Earl of Selborne, in the County of Southampton, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1882 for the lawyer and Liberal politician Roundell Palmer, 1st Baron Selborne, along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Wo ...

, Lord Midleton, Sir

Arthur Steel-Maitland Sir Arthur Herbert Drummond Ramsay Steel-Maitland, 1st Baronet (5 July 1876 – 30 March 1935) was a British Conservative politician. He was the first Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1911 to 1916 and held junior office from 1915 to 191 ...

, Lord Chalmers, Lord Inchape,

Walter Leaf Sir Walter Leaf (26 November 1852, Upper Norwood – 8 March 1927, Torquay) was an English banker, classical scholar and psychical researcher. He published a benchmark edition of Homer's Iliad and was a director of Westminster Bank for many ye ...

, Lord Cowdray. It persuaded approximately 150 MPs to sign a demand for control of government spending. Lord Salisbury believed the PUE "had a good share in impelling the government towards economy". With the Middle Class Union it "helped create the atmosphere in which Christopher Addison was driven first from the Ministry of Health and then from office".Cowling, p. 74.

Notes

Organizations established in 1921 Political advocacy groups in the United Kingdom {{UK-org-stub