A Conversation with Harris and Seldon
A Conversation with Harris and Seldon RALPH HARRIS ARTHUR SELDON with Stephen Erickson w i t h c o m m e n ta r i e s by a l a s ta i r b u r n e t m i lt o n f r i e d m a n h e r b e rt g i e r s c h peter hennessy a n t o n y j ay a n to n i o m a rt i n o pa s c a l s a l i n gordon tullock
The Institute of Economic Affairs
First published in Great Britain in 2001 by The Institute of Economic Affairs 2 Lord North Street Westminster London sw1p 3lb in association with Profile Books Ltd Copyright © The Institute of Economic Affairs 2001 The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. isbn 0 255 36498 9 Many IEA publications are translated into languages other than English or are reprinted. Permission to translate or to reprint should be sought from the General Director at the address above. Typeset in Stone by MacGuru
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CONTENTS
The authors Editor’s introduction Foreword by John Blundell The theme of the conversation, by Stephen Erickson
7 11 13 19
The Conversation
25
Commentaries 1 Spies in the night? Sir Alastair Burnet 2 The IEA’s influence in our times Milton Friedman 3 The IEA and its indirect influence abroad Herbert Giersch 4 A team of singular impact Peter Hennessy 5 Yes, Minister and the IEA Sir Antony Jay 6 Stupor mundi: the IEA and its impact Antonio Martino 7 The IEA and the advance to classical liberalism Pascal Salin
67 67 70 73 76 77 81 85
8 The intellectual situation in the United States in the post-war years and the influence of the IEA Gordon Tullock About the IEA
88
92
THE AUTHORS
Sir Alastair Burnet
Alastair Burnet was Editor of The Economist (1965–74), Editor of The Daily Express (1974–6), and Associate Editor, Independent Television News (1982–91). He was previously a leader writer on The Glasgow Herald (1951–8), Commonwealth Fund Fellow in the USA (1956–7) and leader writer on The Economist (1958–63). He was knighted in 1984, and has won awards from the British Academy of Television Arts (in 1965, 1970 and 1979) and the Royal Television Society (in 1981 and 1999). He has been on the board of Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd since 1982, and is a former member of the Council of the Banking Ombudsman, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the board of United Racecourses Ltd. Herbert Giersch