June 23, 2015

Finest Hour 114, Spring 2002

Page 44

By G. W. SIMONDS

Alan Ebenstein’s recently published biography* of Friedrich Hayek, 1974 Nobel price winner and possibly the 20th century’s greatest political thinker and economist, shows that he was a longtime admirer of Winston Churchill, although best known for his influence on Margaret Thatcher. Churchill’s portrait hung over Hayek’s desk for many years, even when in later life he returned to his native Austria to work.¹ Those who believe that the four foremost conservative political thinkers of the 20th century were Reagan, Thatcher, Goldwater, and Churchill may be interested to know that all four were, in different ways, influenced by Hayek.²

Frederich Hayek, born in Austria in 1899, came to the London School of Economics in 1931 and, with the worsening situation in Germany, later offered his “considerable knowledge of Austrian affairs” to the Ministry of Information.³ His offer declined, he remained at L.S.E. throughout the war. Consequently he and Harold Laski, with Lionel Robbins, became the prominent influences there and, when the wartime evacuation to Cambridge took place, he came into close contact with John Maynard Keynes.

In the May 1945 election Churchill made oblique reference to Hayek,⁴ one presumes because of having read Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom. Ebenstein quotes Churchill’s 1945 campaign speech: “No socialist system can be established without a political police. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.”

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This same speech excerpt is quoted critically in Kramnick and Sheerman’s biography of Laski.⁵ The words in italics come from a little later in the speech, after “No Socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent”—as can be seen from Churchill’s war speech volume, Victory (1946).

Laski’s biographers, and many others over the years, claimed that the “Gestapo” remark contributed to the election of a majority Labour Government and Churchill’s loss of the Premiership. Certainly maximum use was made of this remark by Attlee and others. Clementine Churchill, who had read her husband’s speech in draft, advised this sentence be dropped: not the first time her instincts were correct.⁶

This point apart, it is clear that both Churchill and the Conservative Central Office thought highly of The Road to Serfdom: Hayek was offered precious rationed paper for an abstract, prior to the election, but it could not be printed in time. At this time Laski, as chairman of the Labour Party, objected to Churchill’s invitation to Attlee to go with him to the Potsdam Conference with the election as yet undecided, saying, “the Labour Party shall not be committed to any decision not debated in the Party Executive.” So Churchill may have had a point.

In the first, founding meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, Hayek was unwittingly and incorrectly described as being Winston Churchill’s adviser on economic affairs.⁷ It may be that Attlee’s riposte to the “Gestapo” speech contributed to this misunderstanding.

In a later biographical interview Hayek commented that Churchill believed at one time that cabinet secrets had been leaked to Harold Laski, but that this was untrue: Laski had just guessed.⁸

Much later in life the young Margaret Thatcher admitted she had read Hayek’s books, particularly The Road to Serfdom, and, during his time at the (London) Institute of Economic Affairs embraced him as one of her major philosophical influences.⁹ Hayek is probably now best known in Britain for this; indeed it is believed that despite his political leanings, Tony Blair is also an admirer.

Mr. Simonds ([email protected]. co.uk) is a member of the Churchill Society (UK) in Doncascer, England. Woods Corner is a bibliophile’s department named for the late Churchill bibliographer Fred Woods.

Endnotes:

* Friedrich Hayek: A Biography, by Alan Ebenstein. New York: St. Martins Press. References below refer to Ebenstein’s biography unless otherwise indicated

l. p. 316.

2. p. 209.

3. p. 104.

4. Winston S. Churchill, Victory (London: Cassell, 1946), pp. 186-92, especially the second and third paragraphs on p. 189.

5. p. 138, footnote 37.

6. Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill (London: Cassell, 1979), p. 382.

7. p. 144.

8. p. 182.

9. p. 291