Chris Tame

Christopher Ronald Tame (20 December 1949 – 20 March 2006) was an English libertarian political activist. He is best known as the founder and Director of the Libertarian Alliance, a free market and civil liberties think tank.

Early years Tame was born on 20 December 1949 in Enfield, Middlesex. His father, Ronald Ernest Tame, was a printer who had spent the war in the Eighth Army as an escort to Montgomery and had been mentioned in dispatches. He later became a process engraver and shop steward, and he and Tame's mother Elsie Florence, a nurse, who grew up in post-war Britain.

He was brought up in Godalming in Surrey, where his family had moved. He attended a local Church of England primary school, and then grammar school. In 1971, he graduated from Hull University with a degree in American Studies.

The Libertarian Alliance Tame joined the Conservative students' organisation at Hull, and became active in the organisation. Disillusioned by the interventionist and authoritarian mindset, he left and never went back. He had felt that the Conservative Party was dominated by a "corporate elite" wedded to a "corrupt state capitalism." He announced his departure from the rostrum at an annual Federation of Conservative Students conference in the early 1970s.

After university, Tame settled in London, where he worked mainly for the Institute of Economic Affairs and the National Association for Freedom.

In 1978, Tame set up the Alternative Bookshop and was its manager. The shop became a "mecca" of classical liberals, anarchists, and free-marketers,

Journalism In the mid-1980s, Tame was a producer on Channel 4's Diverse Reports, a series which looked at topical issues with libertarian and socialist perspectives. He also was an avid user of the public library system notably Westminster Library and the Great Smith Street library.

Tame died on 20 March 2006 from an aggressive bone cancer, diagnosed a year before. He was twice divorced and childless.

Legacy

Since Tame's death, the Libertarian Alliance, under Sean Gabb and then President Tim Evans, awarded a number of 'Chris R. Tame Memorial Prizes.' In 2008, this was awarded to American left-anarchist Keith Preston for his essay 'Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy.' In 2010, the 'Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture' was delivered by Stephen Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs.