Liberty
Sir: I much enjoyed Shirley Robin Letwin's excellent piece 'Democracy and Free Enterprise' in your 3 July issue. At last, thank God, a capitalist, private enterprise, free trade rationale is beginning to re-emerge from the years of guilt and obfuscation by which it has been overlaid. Perhaps it is the bicentenary of Adam Smith that has done it.
A free market and a sound currency are the essential defences of personal liberty. Socialism is a one-way road to slavery. Just as the middle of the road is its most dangerous place, so those who pride themselves on their love for the middle ground of politics are also dangerous in that they measure the middle by reference to the left-hand kerb only. If the road is going to the wrong place anyway, there is no particular virtue in remaining in the middle.
After a lifetime of trying, all too ineffectually no doubt, to proclaim the dangers of socialism and the virtues of the free market, it is most encouraging to recognise the enthusiasm with which so many younger people are now rediscovering the economics and policies Of free trade.
To believe in a 'mixed' economy is to believe in socialism. To recognise that we have a mixed economy, however, should act as a warning and lead to constructive proposals to halt the ever-leftward inclination towards socialist slavery and help towards the redelineation of the right-hand kerb of the road. This I have tried to do in my recent book What is Happening to the British Economy?
Oliver Smedley
Duck Street, Wendens Ambo, Essex
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