Chris Tame

Christopher Ronald Tame (20 December 1949 – 20 March 2006) was a British libertarian political activist. He is best known as the founder and Director of the Libertarian Alliance, a free market and civil liberties think tank.^[1]

Early years

Tame was born on 20 December 1949 in

Tame joined the Conservative students' organisation at Hull, and became active in the organisation. Disillusioned by the interventionist and authoritarian mindset, he left and never went back. He had felt that the Conservative Party was dominated by a "corporate elite" wedded to a "corrupt state capitalism." He announced his departure from the rostrum at an annual Federation of Conservative Students conference in the early 1970s.^[1]

In 1967, Tame founded the Libertarian Alliance as an informal discussion group,

After university, Tame settled in London, where he worked mainly for the Institute of Economic Affairs and the National Association for Freedom.

In 1978, Tame set up the Alternative Bookshop and was its manager. The shop became a "mecca" of

Tame did not believe in seeking political power nor propagandising the masses, but saw the importance of influencing the intellectual debate.[4] Under the umbrella of the Libertarian Alliance, he published prolifically. One such work published in 1989 bore the title "Taxation is Theft". In addition to writing, he enjoyed engaging in debate with visitors to his shop.

Tame was equally opposed to censorship. During the

In the early 1980s, Tame was recruited by Sir Keith Joseph at the Department of Trade and Industry to prepare a reading list to wean civil servants off the interventionist mindset in favour of genuine free markets and privatisation.

Being a

In the mid-1980s, Tame was a producer on Channel 4's Diverse Reports, a series which looked at topical issues with libertarian and socialist perspectives.^[1]

In 1983, while researching for an article on how easy it was to acquire guns, grenades and other military items with a credit card by mail order from the United States, Tame duly did so and carried his acquired collection of light armaments in his knapsack to work further in the library at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. He was arrested, charged and subsequently acquitted.^[6]

FOREST and Smokers' Rights

He was a non-smoker and keep-fit enthusiast, but he philosophically regarded that smokers' bodies were their own and that a person's liberty must extend to the freedom to make foolish decisions in this regard. He defended the rights of tobacco smokers as Director of

In the later part of his life, Tame moved to Ramsgate, where he had been working on a seven-volume Bibliography of Freedom.^[4]

Tame was an avid collector of economic and philosophical books, and had amassed a collection of some 40,000 works, including a number of rare classical liberal documents, some of which were donated to the Foundation for Economic Education in New York.^[2] A large part of the rest of his collection was donated to Faculty of Economics, that is part of Prague school of Economics and Business in Czechia.^[7] He also was an avid user of the public library system notably Westminster Library and the Great Smith Street library.

Tame died on 20 March 2006 from an aggressive

Legacy

Since Tame's death, the Libertarian Alliance, under

External links

• The Libertarian Alliance