A web search for the 19th Century Manchester School of Economics yields very little, until I finally stumbled across a speech given by Alex Singleton, the President of the Globalisation Institute on the occasion of their launch in London on July 19, 2005. This is what he said:

We follow the Manchester School of Economics. That’s the school founded in the 19th Century by economists, businesspeople and campaigners who argued for free trade. Why would we want to dig up the ideas of some dead economists?

Well, it’s because history repeats itself. Over 150 years ago a group of Manchester men, most notably Richard Cobden and John Bright - our intellectual heroes - set up the Anti-Corn Law League to campaign for free trade. Free trade however wasn’t an entirely popular idea, though, and a speaker they employed to travel the country sometime found an angry mob would form to prevent him from speaking. Protectionists held protectionist meetings to say why Britain - then a developing country - needed to protect its economy. The problem was that this protection - while nice for farming landowners - was causing people to starve.

Nowadays we have a new generation of protectionists who say that today’s developing countries should protect their economies. India did that in the 30 years after independence. Like in 19th Century Britain, the result was starvation.

We are not neo-liberals. We have healthy skepticism of neo-liberal institutions. We think the World Trade Organization, for example, is OK and we wish it well. But in the two decades, most of the lowering of protection has been done unilaterally - most notably by China and India. It’s the liberalisation from below that works best. Ultimately it’s going to be nations deciding individually to adopt free trade that will be the big idea of the 21th Century just as it was in the 19th.

If you want to label us, label us as lower-case l liberals. Philosophically are real liberals - not neo-liberals, not neo-conservatives, not corporatists. We are pro-enterprise but not in the pockets of big business. We don’t represent multinational companies. After all, there are lots of first-rate public affairs companies that do that already. Most of our funding comes from a wide spread of individuals and grant-making foundations. We of course welcome contributions from businesses who wish to facilitate free thinking on policy issues, but we limit the amount that any particular company can give us in order to preserve the independence of our work.

So what are our successes so far? The Archbishop of Canterbury preached about one of our reports in St Paul’s Cathedral. We succeeded in getting Christian Aid to alter some of its advertising. Our website is getting over 1000 visitors a day. And we’re already getting a huge amount of broadcast media hits on the subject of globalization.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Richard Cobden which sums up our frame of mind quite perfectly.

“I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe - drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race and creed and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace… I believe that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires - for gigantic armies and great navies - for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour - will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour with his brother man.”

Or, in other words, free trade is a good thing not just because it promotes prosperity but because it promotes peace. So I propose a toast: to free trade and world peace.

While I’ve not completed my review of their website, this speech and a perfunctory browse around the site convinces me that The Globalisation Institute, based in Brussels, is a think tank that promotes ideas to help Europe thrive in the global economy. And best of all, they understand the 19th Century Manchester School of Economics principles.

Date posted : September 4th, 2007 by Michael Haupt Last Modified : September 28th, 2007 / Filed under : 2007 Liquidity Crisis, Wealth Creation / Report a Concern Navigate : Previous post / Next post / Top of Page
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