I w .3‘

_.:;--r’ ‘

I HAVE OFTEN thanked God
for[Dr Hayek.,I do so for two
quite different but equally
compelling reasons. In the
first place, hepis the most per-

suasv'"~ Uexact. and lucid
.(thoi ,3_...,.oy no means the
easiest) exponent of the

political theory of classical
liberalism extant, and that
theory embodies half (and
today the more neglected
half) of . the truth about
politics. _ '

, Second, he acts as a salutary
-reminder of the abiding gulf be-
tween Tories and classical
liberals, a ulf which the young
intelligentsia of the_ Right in

, England nowadaysis in_ danger

-of ‘forgetting and which the
Torylr party. will forget at its
peri . ‘
Certainly there could be no
worthier cause than that to
which Dr Hayek devotes the
second volume of his “Law,
‘Legislation and Liberty” (Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, £4-95)

 under the sub-title “The Mirage
" of Social Justice.”

With tightly
controlled_-oassion, he tells us
_that_lu's r!9,,_-firsurviving ambition
"13 to ' “he phrase “social
lilstic-_  the English lan-
2ggtiage‘»,,,'g?represent_ it in its true
t_:l1‘ai‘.aCfter as ‘an intellectually

. disreputable mark of “dema-

gog-y-’ and “cheap journalism.”

In ?_so'_ far as it has any mean-
mg left, the phrase signifies a
naiyegbeliief in the possibility and
iropizlety of devising and enforc-
_‘an equitable division ‘of

‘”' between all the members

ty. Since there is abso-
xmeans of finding an
aicriterion for such a

r indeed of establish-

son what thecriterion

- :--.“so.c_ial justice” has

. r

2., becona’e"“aEi‘1'ezno-trr '»

‘attached is? 111.6‘;
fig‘ class-which 1._s_,.
it cond_ition;,' ,
l3l1é,'CrQdE§;"&$§.O§.;: '1»

To rev’? *‘t;h‘e exmr‘

‘Vt-its L», V ‘-5-; u-

.§mjost ‘of th:>‘,-‘_s:e,;‘;pi1_rpose§‘_<1¥

A lmmmimmnmmmmmumummummmuunmum PERSONAL VIEW mmmIn1InIrmmmnmnrmmmmnnmmmmmnui‘

 free market  not enough

,T. E. UTLEY discovers a flaw in the arguments

of a cherisl1ed‘Rigl1t-wing philosopher

the game or even to determine
what the prizes "shall be. As for
law, it is part of its essence that
it should apply equally to every-
body, that it should confer no
special privileges or liabilities
on particular classes and that it
should be addressed not to pro-
ducing specific social changes
but merely tothe negative pur-
pose ot defining the framework
in which individuals and groups

can pursue their own interests.»

All this rests, of course, on
the liberal assumption that
every individua-l has his own
proper domain within which he
should be free to act for him-
self, and that the business of
government is to protect him
from interference in the exer-
cise of that freedom.

It follows, fllierefo-re, that in
thinking about legislation we
should never apply ourselves to
trying to foresee what efiezts it
will have on the supposed in-
terest; of particular people and
classes——w*»ha-t it will do for
farmers, trade unionists or ‘re-
tired civil servants, for instance.

Essentially the wise legislator
should concern himself with man
in his naked universality, with
the means by which he should
conduct his relations with other
men, and not with th general
results which will arise from
these relations.

‘Only in simple, primitive,
tribal societies, so Dr Hayek’s
argument runs, can the‘ com-
munity as a whole have positive
objects which it pursues in
unison. In great and free
societies, government cannot and
ought not to seek to know the

'-n_1ul.tI'.faripus qonflictivng purposes

£93: ,  sulzierts’ are
gerous-——presum ’ ' ~oi:»_ it
ipronounce;  e leg: " '

  
  

_to
’f

,5.

s ‘L
*&»‘5et‘~

in the past half-century, most of
them would have instantly to be
consigned to the flames. If we
are-going to survive, something‘
very like \a purge on this scale
will have to take place’; "

Nor can ‘anybody claim that
Dr Hayek is unpractical: he
knows perfectly well that the
liberal Utopia cannot be in-
stalled in five minutes. He is
merely trying to define what
the goals of a free society
should be.

Why then do the ancestral
voices of Toryism persistently
warn me against Dr Hayek ? In
_a nutshell, because his rigid
ideology, which rests firmly on
the view that the free market
is a panacea for_ nearly all politi-
cally curable ills, ex-aggerates
one Of the 21'?!” trvtl-\" nlerv-f
poli
the
libs
anc

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if s
pro
for(
une
Ulst
BBC!
farr
for
per
pro
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com
HLi

aye
the
the

53’-i‘l3!P‘”rei;as<

 

l t  A

Wheatcrofti 

HARRYi wHEArC1iorr,~ '

who has died, aged "+78.

was perhaps, the "greatest ‘
entrepreneur of the garden -

ing world, whose bushy
side-whiskers and “pepper
and salt ” suits were as well
known as his roses.

He founded the firm of Wheat- -.
croft Brothers more than 50 -

years ago with his brother
Albert. They bought an acre of
land near Nottingham for-£90,

which they were given bsvflieir‘

father, a bricklayer.

When he was 17, Harry
Whea-tcroft refused to fight m
the First World War, and was

court inartialled and sentenced-
to two years’ hard labour m=

Wormwcod S(I'L1bS. After 18
months he contracted tubercu-
lnsis and was sent borne. ‘