Co-founder and President of the Adam Smith Institute, Madsen Pirie, tells us how the organisation went on to become a national institution, despite its humble beginnings.
This week sees the publication of my book, Think Tank: The Story of the Adam Smith Institute. It was great fun writing this book because every day spent writing was a walk down memory lane. The name of the book is precisely what you get, because it is, above all, a story. It's a first person narrative of what it was like to return to Britain from the US and set up a new type of think tank, without any resources or backing. We had to grow the Adam Smith Institute from nothing, and the story is an account of how it happened. From scavenging materials from builders' skips, to doing cover artwork with press-on lettering, it is (I hope) a light-hearted account of how we coped. I still shudder when I think about how we narrowly outwitted bailiffs and avoided the debtor's prison that so coloured the life of Charles Dickens.
I tried to write an engaging and unpretentious account of what it was actually like to build up something that became a national institution, and I wanted to put across some of the excitement and struggle that it involved. Above all, I wanted to convey in its pages some of the fun and mischief that accompanied it.
The UK turned its back on state collectivism and socialism and, instead, embraced markets, incentives and opportunities. The Adam Smith Institute was part of that story, and played an honourable role in helping to bring that about. Think Tank tells that story, and tries to do it in a readable and absorbing way.