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Letter from Lord Harris of High Cross
to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
NEIL HAMILTON
I am venturing to write as one who has known
Neil Hamilton well since his student days and who has followed
his career closely ever since. I am therefore able to declare
from direct knowledge over almost 30years that he has been
unwaveringly consistent in the causes he has espoused and I know
of no exceptions to that course of conduct. Indeed, it was because
I largely share his dedication and beliefs that I felt no hesitation
in composing the attached letter (5 October 1996) which was duly
published in The Daily Telegraph. Accordingly, I would
say that Guardian and other journalists who have repeated
the foul accusations by Mr Fayed, that he is principally motivated
by money and his opinions could be bought, demonstrate that they
simply do not know the man.
I vividly remember first meeting Neil Hamilton
as an outstanding Conservative student leader at Aberystwyth
in 1969. He stood out as a high-spirited, articulate exponent
of the classical conception of free society. He liked to provoke
more earnest left-wingers by proposing ideas that are now commonplace
but were then characterised as extreme (like ending rent controls,
denationalising the coal mines and privatising the welfare state).
These extravagances were made palatable to the main student body
by an irrepressible sense of fun.
Despite much student tomfoolery, he was always
a totally serious student of the publications of the Institute
of Economic Affairs (which I ran for 30 years) and similar "think
tanks". From there, he went on to develop a rare understanding
of the scholarly writings of Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, etc.
His deep commitment to monetarist and free market ideas predated
by many years the emergence of "Thatcherism" after 1979.
One among many libertarian causes Mr Hamilton
and I share is upholding the rights of adult smokers. Indeed,
I am chairman of FOREST (Freedom Organisation for the Right to
Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) of which he has been a member for many
years. Whatever view is taken of personal health risks, we believe
it to be the hallmark of a free society that adults should be
able to make up their own minds about such indulgences so long
as no harm is caused to others. (Extensive epidemiological research
on so-called "passive smoking" has failed to show a
statistically significant correlation with cancer, which has a
wide variety of causes.) Accordingly, Neil Hamilton's support
for US Tobacco over the "Skoal Bandits" was entirely
predictable and completely in line with his philosophical approach
over many years. Yet he was criticised for putting down a motion
to annul draft regulations to ban Skoal Bandits, notwithstanding
that these regulations were later over-ruled in a High Court
action which will be known to your Mr Pleming as junior Treasury
Counsel in that case.
In the 1980s, before this miserable press campaign
on "sleaze", I was by no means alone in thinking Hamilton
clearly marked out for political advancement, hardly less certainly
than Portillo, Redwood or Lilley. Indeed, qualities that led
me to prefer Neil Hamilton were his candour and courage in revealing
his true mind and his less inhibited, cheerful, even jocular
style of discourse.
It must be admitted that in debate he could
deploy a caustic turn of phrase that must have made some enemies,
especially among the slower-witted or ideological opposed. The
Guardian can at least be credited with having singled-out
for destruction one of that highly ideological paper's most formidable
political foes.
Ralph Harris
26 February 1997
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