CHRISTOPHER TAME Bibliophile and pamphleteer
Born: 20 December, 1949, in Enfield. Died: 20 March, 2006, in
London, aged 56.
ONE incident can illustrate so much of a life. In 1983, Chris Tame,
a free marketeer or libertarian, was writing an article on how it
was easy to acquire guns, grenades and other military items by just
buying them from United States mail order catalogues. He deployed
his credit card to confirm his view. Carrying his collection of
light armaments in his knapsack he went off to the American Embassy
in Grosvenor Square in London to work further in the library. The
X-ray security gear detected a terrorist. Chris was jumped upon,
pummelled by the marines and arrested.
The court accepted he was innocent, if unwise, but Chris was never
to escape the suspicion of the security services again. Because
there are left-wing terrorists, there must be free market ones too
seemed to be the logic of the CIA and MI5.
As Chris was then working with Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of
State for Trade and Industry, the security services were alarmed at
his evident connections. He was barred from attending Tory Party
events. He scoffed: "They are frightened of ideas, not of me."
On taking office at the DTI, Sir Keith asked Chris to compile a
reading list for senior civil servants. His idea was to wean them
off the subsidy mindset and to suggest privatisation and
de-regulation. To digest the set texts was not obligatory but it was
suggested knowledge of Smith, Hume, Hayek and Friedman was a prudent
career step. It may be argued the liberalisation of the telephone
market was Chris's greatest success. "Competition is the best
discovery procedure," was his mantra.
His
Bibliography of Freedom, published by the Centre for Policy
Studies, illuminates all his campaigning life. Chris was a dedicated
guerrilla fighter for the capitalist cause - the opposite of the
corporatist complacency of the CBI or other official voices. He
regarded businessmen as always willing to betray the ideals of the
open market. He thought the Conservative efforts to suppress or
regulate prices in the 1970-74 period to combat "inflation" while
still pouring new credit into the economy as a measure of both their
duplicity and stupidity. Tame was influential in convincing Margaret
Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Sir Keith that inflation was entirely a
disease of money and not of greedy trade unions, speculators, oil
sheikhs or other phantoms.
Chris leaves the Libertarian
Alliance, a diverse group of thinkers, as his monument. The LA
sees itself as the heirs to John Locke and John Stuart Mill. It was
Chris Tame's decision to avoid the error of their fellow US
libertarians in fighting elections. He saw this as futile. He
regarded its role as to subvert by publishing, writing and arguing.
His friend Sean Gabb has described this position: "Rather than
propagandising the masses, libertarians had to win over the
intellectuals."
This may prove to be the great unseen political narrative of the
last 50 years. Libertarian thinkers have been pre-occupied in their
think-tanks rather than in the transient banalities of political
campaigns.
Chris ran the Alternative Bookshop, in London's Covent Garden. It
was a base and coffee shop for the libertarians, the posher ones
terming themselves Whigs. Influence is a will o'the wisp but this
may be Chris's greatest contribution. While the Tory Party is
tacking to the left on the assumption this will be rewarded by
votes, the Libertarians argue at a deeper level. What are the
cardinal virtues in this cosmology? Free trade, the rule of law and
tolerance. Most topics are illuminated by these searchlight
principles. To Tories who got exercised about homosexuality or
kindred topics, Chris would just shrug and say: "Don't we believe in
a free market in apertures?"
As a non-smoker, indeed as something of a health-food enthusiast, it
was odd that the tobacco industry appointed Chris to run
Forest, the campaign to
preserve the freedom to smoke between 1988 and 1995. He adhered
strictly to the view that smoker's bodies were their own and liberty
includes the freedom to make foolish decisions.
Christ Tame had carved his own unique niche in British politics. He
kept the small libertarian flame supplied with fuel. He learned he
had a rare bone cancer last year. His end was defiant and dignified.