The material in these boxes is mainly concerned with different aspects of the day-to-day work of the Bureau, some of which are central to the collection as a whole.

MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/69-71 reveal the detailed organisation behind the conferences and meetings staged by the Bureau between 1945 and 1962. There is a certain amount of background material in the form of memoranda and reports, but the bulk of the papers - invitation and attendance lists, and correspondence with speakers and advisers - shows how the Bureau set about organising these events and how far representatives from the colonies participated in them. The absence of material between 1949 and 1956 may be entirely fortuitous, though it could support Margaret Cole's belief, expressed in a memorandum in Apr 1954, that 'The Bureau is failing to give the lead which once it gave to Labour thinking about the colonies' by its 'failure to run meetings ... to initiate group enquiries' (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 2, fols. 39-45). Marjorie Nicholson, in a letter to Lord Faringdon explaining her reasons for resigning as Secretary in Dec 1954, explicitly stated 'The demand for conferences and meetings has fallen off considerably ... this trend has persisted for so long that ... this part of the work will never regain its old importance' since 'the issues involved are far more numerous, the subjects more complicated and detailed, and local knowledge more essential' (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 2, fols. 72-74).

A new departure in the 1960s was the Colonial Students' Discussion Group on Socialism in Under-developed Territories (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/71), an attempt to provide a more regular meeting-point for the growing community of overseas students and those interested in their views. The Bureau's role as a link between Britain and the colonies is seen from another angle in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/75, where the lists of colonial contacts in folder 3 help to complete the network of relationships throughout the colonies revealed by the correspondence in the territorial boxes (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/77-180).

Folders 1-3 of MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/75 deal with a different aspect of the Bureau's public relations work; they contain, under somewhat arbitrary territorial headings, its correspondence with a wide range of individuals and organisations in non-colonial territories interested in the Bureau's publications and fields of work.

More central to the everyday work of the Bureau, and to the collection as a whole, are the Committee Papers contained in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72-74 and MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29-30. The placing of MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29-30 in the Collection presented difficulties because of the dual nature of the contents of MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29. After the Bureau's structure and methods of work were reorganised in 1955, the minutes of the various Committees were filed in numbered sequence with the memoranda or 'research documents' which provided a basis for the Bureau's discussions and a means of formulating its conclusions. These memoranda sometimes represented the raw material for the Bureau's publications, and for this reason MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29 (the composite file) and MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/30 (consisting mainly of duplicates of papers in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29) were placed with the publications during the initial arrangement of the Collection. However, the memoranda are linked, both by their contents and by the numbered sequence imposed upon them, with the records of the Bureau's discussions; while, because of its relative continuity, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29 fills many gaps in the Committee Papers in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72-74. Since those interested in the Committee Papers after 1955 would need to consult MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29 as well as MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72-74, it seemed more convenient to list them together.

The minutes, notices, and agenda of the various committees contained in these boxes are a useful skeleton guide to the Bureau's activities and preoccupations between 1950 and 1963, and are supplemented for the period before 1950 by the papers of C.W.W. Greenidge, who joined the Advisory Committee in 1941 soon after the Bureau's inception (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 284/11). Flesh is added to the skeleton by the correspondence, notes, and less formal memoranda exchanged between individual committee members and officers. Personalities emerge; reasons appear for decisions about policy, changes in staffing, and a whole sequence of constitutional developments within the Bureau itself.

It is clear from the papers in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72 that by 1950 the Advisory Committee had become too large to act as an effective steering committee, and that its meetings were poorly attended. In 1951, it was suggested that the Committee should be divided into a Working Committee and an Advisory Panel, but by Apr 1952 the scheme was dropped and was not revived until 1954, when there seems to have been a conflict of opinion with the parent Society over the Bureau's objectives and expenditure, culminating in the resignation of Marjorie Nicholson with effect from Jan 1955 (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 2, fols. 1-22). In Dec 1954, a Working Committee consisting of the Bureau's officers with the addition of Arthur Creech Jones and Eirene White was set up by the Fabian Executive (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 2, fols. 67-71), and its composition, objectives, and routine, and relationship to the Executive, were laid down at a meeting on 22 Mar 1955 (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 2, fol. 122). Its papers, filed with those of the Advisory Committee in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 5, and MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29, suggest that the existence side by side of two committees, one reporting to the other, inevitably produced some duplication of effort: and attendance at Advisory Committee meetings continued to be unsatisfactory (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29, fol. 182). In Mar 1959 discussions on the membership and functions of both Committees were initiated (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29, fol. 195), and it was decided to enlarge and strengthen the Working Committee (renamed the Bureau Committee) and to replace the Advisory Committee by a panel of Advisers to 'be called together once a year, and consulted individually meanwhile' - a decision that recognised the erosion of the Advisory Committee's original functions (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29, fol. 197). The process of reconstructing the two committees is recorded in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/72, folder 3, fols. 174-252. The correspondence between Creech Jones and the Bureau in this period contains many references to the impending reorganisation (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/14).

The papers of the new Bureau Committee for 1959-1960 are contained in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/73 and MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/29, which also contains the Committee's papers from Feb 1961 onwards. Much of this latter material, and of the material in MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 365/74 (a collection of Fabian papers in which the Bureau appears as only one of several off-shoots of the parent Society) is concerned with the Bureau's future in relation to the new Commonwealth, and with the possibility of amalgamation with the Fabian International Bureau - a possibility explored by a Co-ordinating Committee during 1962 and put into effect by the Fabian Executive in Dec of that year. By Nov, the records of the Fabian Commonwealth Bureau cease, being replaced in Jan 1963 by those of the International and Commonwealth Bureau and its Commonwealth Sub-Committee. There are no records after Oct 1963, when the Collection ends, appropriately, with a reference to a farewell luncheon for Creech Jones, a founding member of the original Fabian Colonial Bureau and its Chairman throughout much of its existence.