Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross

Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross (10 December 1924 – 19 October 2006), was a British economist. He was head of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a neoliberal think tank, from 1957 to 1988.

Early life and education Harris, the son of a tramways inspector, was "one of four children born to working-class parents on a council estate in Tottenham, north-east London". He was educated at Tottenham Grammar School. He read Economics at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree.

Career

After working at the Conservative Political Centre at Conservative Central Office, The IEA developed links with Austrian School and monetarist (from the Chicago School) economists, such as Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Harry Gordon Johnson, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and James M. Buchanan, and published many pamphlets and papers on public finance issues, such as taxation, pensions, education, health, transport, and exchange rates. In 1979, during Margaret Thatcher's first few months in power, he was made a life peer as Baron Harris of High Cross, of Tottenham in Greater London. Despite his strong affiliation with Tory free marketeers, Harris sat on the crossbenches in the House of Lords to show his independence from any political party. Although he did not like to be described as a Thatcherite, Harris was a founder of No Turning Back, a group within the Conservative Party advocating for Thatcherite policies and founded in 1985 to defend her economic policies. Harris became a Eurosceptic, and was chairman of the Bruges Group from 1989 to 1991. He was a director of Rupert Murdoch's Times Newspapers company from 1988 to 2001, although he read and wrote for The Daily Telegraph. Nonetheless, Harris described Murdoch as the "Saviour of what we used to call Fleet Street".

A pipe smoker, Harris was a chairman of smokers' rights campaigners, FOREST, and its president in 2003. He was not convinced that passive smoking was dangerous and published and campaigned against the banning of smoking on trains from Brighton to Victoria station in 1995. Harris died suddenly of a ruptured aortic aneurysm at his home in North London on the morning of 19 October 2006.

Personal life Harris married Jose Pauline Jeffery in 1949. They had two sons and a daughter. His sons predeceased him, dying in 1979 and 1992. Lady Harris died in 2017.

Works Politics without Prejudice (1956) Hire Purchase in a Free Society (1958, 1959, 1961; with Arthur Seldon and Margot Naylor) Choice in Welfare 1965 (1965) The Urgency of an Independent University (1968, 1969; with Arthur Seldon) Choice in Welfare 1970 (1971) Down with the Poor (1971) Not from Benevolence (1977, with Arthur Seldon) Overruled on Welfare (1979) No, Prime Minister! (1994) Murder a Cigarette (1998, with Judith Hatton)