Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross
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The Right Honourable The Lord Harris of High Cross |
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| Born | 10 December 1924 London, England |
| Died | 19 October 2006 (aged 81) |
| Alma mater | Queens' College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Title | Baron Harris of High Cross |
| Children | 2 sons, 1 daughter |
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 from 1957 to 1988.
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. At Cambridge he was influenced by Stanley Dennison, "who introduced him to the works of Friedrich von Hayek".
After working at the Conservative Political Centre at Conservative Central Office, Harris was a lecturer in political economy at St Andrews University from 1949 to 1965. He was an unsuccessful Conservative Party candidate for Kirkcaldy in 1951 and for Edinburgh Central in 1955, and became a leader writer for the Glasgow Herald in 1956.
Harris became general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 1957. He remained in this post until 1988, when he stepped down to become its chairman and was replaced by Graham Mather. Harris was then a founding president of the IEA from 1990 to his death. The IEA was set up by Antony Fisher and Oliver Smedley in 1955. Friedrich Hayek had suggested that an intellectual counterweight was necessary to combat the prevailing Keynesian consensus "Butskellism" of R. A. Butler and Hugh Gaitskell. Harris, together with editorial director Arthur Seldon, built the IEA into a bastion of free market liberal economics. The IEA developed links with economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Gottfried Haberler, Harry Johnson, Milton Friedman, George Stigler and James Buchanan, and published many pamphlets and papers on public finance issues, such as taxation, pensions, education, health, transport, and exchange rates.
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