A warrior in the battle of ideas

Lord (Ralph) Harris of High Cross was the last of a number of extraordinary individuals associated with the founding of the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain.

The institute, Harris and his long-time colleague Arthur Seldon are credited with providing the intellectual ammunition behind the Thatcher revolution that turned Britain away from the decline of the generations before. The institute and its two directors were in the vanguard of an ideas battle that was to sweep the world.

Harris, who has died at 81, was the son of a tramways inspector. He was educated at Tottenham Grammar and then Queens’ College, Cambridge, from which he gained an honours degree in economics. He taught economics at St Andrews in Scotland, an easy task for a man imbued already with the spirit of Adam Smith, and by 1956 was a leader writer on the Glasgow Herald.

The same year he renewed an acquaintance with Antony Fisher, who had an idea he wanted to discuss. They had first met in 1949 and both had been influenced by the ideas of the economist Friedrich Hayek, whose 1944 publication The Road to Serfdom had become an international bestseller.

Fisher had sought out Hayek for advice on how to reverse the slide into socialism he felt had become one of the legacies of World War II. Hayek urged him to engage in the battle of ideas and to support others in the endeavour. Fisher went on to develop a highly successful chicken business and now, with some funds available, met Harris to discuss the recent establishment of an institute to research and promulgate free-market ideas.

In 1957, the Institute of Economic Affairs moved into its first office with Harris as its first employee. He was the ideal director for such an operation. He combined the analytical skills of an economist with the clear writing skills of a journalist. But Harris had to be more: a fund-raiser, cajoler, manager and missionary for an unfashionable cause.

Moreover, Harris was an effective and witty public speaker. (He was appointed by Margaret Thatcher to the House of Lords in 1979 – her first such appointment – and his speeches were often known to draw the lords back to the chamber from dinner.)

Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, Harris and Seldon worked tirelessly for the cause they had devoted their lives to. From being perceived as cranks, then oddities and eccentrics from another era, their critiques and publications began to get attention. Their messages against inflation, macro-economic finetuning, government regulation and meddling, public ownership and union power began to get a hearing. The ideas of the institute and its authors sparked a counter-revolution in Britain and have spread around the world. They also sparked the emergence of hundreds of institutes with broadly similar philosophies and operating styles.

An organisation succeeds for many reasons and for the institute the reason was the team of Harris and Seldon. But Harris was the front man. Unfailingly polite even to people whose ideas he detested, he could disarm a hostile group with his charm and humour. His ability to make complex ideas accessible is an asset few have. He was a mentor and friend to people around the world.

The image of Harris, pipe in hand – he was the chairman of and prime mover in Forest (the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) and a member of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers Club – and resplendent in one of his many waistcoats, hair parted in the middle and a twinkle in his eye, is hard to forget and sometimes hard to square with the sharpness of his thinking. But he was never to be underestimated. The clarity of his mind was matched by the deftness of his hand as he was quite a gifted conjurer and could entertain a gaggle of children, and their parents, for hours. In the words of one parent, “he was the liberal dispenser of ice-cream and fun”.

The term tireless worker is often overused but in Harris’s case it is hard to think of another. In addition to the Institute of Economic Affairs, he helped establish the University of Buckingham and served on its council for 15 years. He was the secretary of the influential Mont Pelerin Society for many years and the president for a two-year term, served as the chairman of Civitas, a social policy think tank, and as chairman of the Bruges Group of Eurosceptics. He was in a state of perpetual agitation.

Harris visited Australia three times. In 1986 he delivered The Enemies of Progress as the John Bonython Lecture at the 10th anniversary of the Centre for Independent Studies.

Harris married Jose Jeffery in 1949 and they had two sons and a daughter. His sons predeceased him.