As an intellectual forefather of Thatcherism, Lord Harris of High Cross - who died on October 19, 2006, aged 81 - played a key role in ensuring the spread of liberty across the globe. He was also a leading opponent of a federal Europe, and a staunch defender of British national sovereignty.
As General Editor of Britain's Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) from 1957 to 1987, Lord Harris saw it as his duty to resist the "kind of serfdom" that the planned economy brought, and in his time the Institute published hundreds of pamphlets promoting economic liberty by such distinguished figures as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
That the ideas Harris and the Institute of Economic Affairs promoted in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are today the norm is a tribute to their success, but disguises the courage and foresight required in that period to oppose the Keynesian consensus and planned economy to which both main political parties in Britain were then committed.
When the Thatcher government was elected in Britain in 1979, the IEA had an attentive audience in government for its ideas and became, in the words of The Times newspaper, "one of the most influential sources of British economic policy".
Prime Minister Thatcher acknowledged this intellectual debt in 1987, noting: "What we have achieved could never have been done without the leadership of the IEA".
Millions of beneficiaries of Thatcherism around the world owe Lord Harris a similar debt. In the words of Dr. Edwin Feulner, President of the Heritage Foundation, Lord Harris’s “wit, enthusiasm, commitment to principle and love of life will be sorely missed by all of us.”