Ever since I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I have been in reminiscent mode. Having solicited compliments from others about what a splendid life I have lead, I was advised by my oldest friend (we were at Marlborough together in the 1960s) to do some public thinking along these lines myself. What do I think were my best achievements? Good advice, I think. If you want others to do something, start by doing that thing yourself.
Well, at the heart of anything good that I have done with my life was that burst of pamphleteering that I did on behalf of the Libertarian Alliance (Tame, Micklethwait, Gabb version) in the 1980s and 1990s, and thenabouts.
Because of the chaos that is unleashed whenever you search for “libertarian alliance”, caused by the idiotic feuding that broke out concerning who owned the Libertarian Alliance in the 1980s, between two factions, one lead by Chris Tame (my bit of the “LA”) and the one lead by David Ramsay Steele, both of whom subsequently ran their own distinct and diverging versions of the “Libertarian Alliance”, finding your way to any particular bit of “libertarian alliance” activity can be difficult. And, as I recounted in an earlier posting provoked by a piece of “libertarian alliance” writing, published by me, and written by Paul Staines, aka Guido, I thought that I had permanently lost the link to the list of these publications in .pdf form that lists all the various Libertarian Alliance (Fame, Micklethwait, Gabb version) pamphlets that I published at that time. But Rob Fisher supplied that exact link in a comment on that posting. And this is it.
And just to nail it all down, in a form that I will be able to find again, here is that list, with all the links to the various pamphlet sub-classifications:
Political Notes
Economic Notes
Philosophical Notes
Legal Notes
Cultural Notes
Historical Notes
Sociological Notes
Educational Notes
Psychological Notes
Scientific Notes
Atheist Notes
Religious Notes
Tactical Notes
Foreign Policy Perspectives
LA Pamphlets
Libertarian Reprints
Libertarian Heritage
Study Guides
Personal Perspectives
Libertarian Fictions
For some reason, the top one of those links, to “Political Notes”, doesn’t work, but all the others get you to a list of all the relevant pamphlets. You can get your way to each publication, starting with this one (Political Notes 1 and 2 never made it to .pdf form), but there’s a bit more contriving to do there.
Towards the end of some of the series, the design does a radical switch. These switches mark the moment when I stopped doing the design of these things. (Apologies, but I do not now recall who it was who took over from me.) I stopped doing these designs because the internet had arrived, and I felt that the age of “pamphleteering” was now over, and the age of blogging had arrived.
The one task that remained was somehow contriving to put all these .pdf files that I had “desktop published”, onto the internet. Sean Gabb did that. And once he had, I felt that my job as a Libertarian Alliance (Tame, Micklethwait, Gabb tendency) functionary was done.
Because of the chaos associated with the words “libertarian alliance”, my attitude to the Libertarian Alliance was that this brand was permanently fucked, and the only thing to do about that was walk away from it and to find some other way to be a libertarian, while hopefully extracting the pamphlets out from under the mess, and in general rescuing the best bits done by people on both sides of the great divide by gathering them up and flying different flags above them.
Nigel Meek?
Yes, I think it was him who took over.
I have an archive of all of this. It’s on a different computer that isn’t presently properly plugged in, so I may not be able to look at it again until a bit later. I definitely do have the index for Political Notes, though. I may also have notes 1 and 2, but I shall have to look.