In 1984, two bodies responsible for science research policy and funding in the United Kingdom - the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) and the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) - asked for a Committee to investigate the UK's participation in high energy physics in general and CERN in particular. The enquiry is in the context of continually reduced levels of public sector expenditure in the UK, which have caused severe cutbacks in all non-defence research spending. The Committee, under the chairmanship of Sir John Kendrew, a distinguished microbiologist, includes other scientists, an industrialist and an economist, but no particle physicist.