In Memoriam: Linda Whetstone (1942 - 2021)
We are saddened by the death of Linda Whetstone (1942-2021), a good friend of the Adam Smith Institute and a tireless campaigner and organiser for the cause of a free society and free economy.
In that, Linda took up the work of her father, Battle of Britain pilot Antony Fisher, who in the 1950s, set up the highly influential Institute of Economic Affairs — following advice from the great liberal thinker F A Hayek that liberty is won through ideas, not politics. Knighted under Margaret Thatcher’s government for his work in advancing the ideas of liberty, Sir Antony went on to create the Atlas Network, an institution dedicated to establishing and assisting free-market think-tanks around the globe.The Network has by now grown to around 500 partner think-tanks in 100 countries.
Linda became a board member of the Institute of Economic Affairs and of the Atlas Network, rising to become its chair before going on to become President of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association of liberal-minded scholars and practitioners first created by Hayek in 1947. She still held this office when she died, suddenly, at an Atlas Network forum in Miami on December 15th.
Linda was also a farmer who gave advice to Margaret Thatcher on agricultural policy reform and wrote reports and spoke at events for the Adam Smith Institute criticising the agricultural subsidies system. She bred horses and became Chair of British Dressage, where she was instrumental in the development of the National Championships and Area Festivals.
However, she will be best remembered for her tireless initiatives and effort in helping spread liberal ideas and working with young liberal activists in many countries, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. She developed a CD with key extracts from the work of important liberal thinkers such as Hayek and Milton Friedman, successfully negotiating with publishers to release their copyright for the purpose of public education through this medium. Over 150,000 copies were distributed to over 60 countries. Having access to these ideas — so rarely taught in schools in rich and poor countries alike — brought countless young people their first experience of liberal thought and the arguments to support it. Many of them went on to form their own liberal student societies and think-tanks.
It was Linda who urged me to write, for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Foundations of a Free Society, a short introduction to the liberal mind, which she helped get translated into over twenty different languages including Arabic, Swahili, French, Farsi, Dari and many others. So successful was this enterprise that she commissioned another author to write Islamic Foundations of a Free Society, which again she helped get translated and distributed across the Middle East and North Africa.
Those who knew her will remember her as a no-nonsense person who railed without tiring against the inbuilt conservatism of governments and organisations, particularly those that were supposedly committed to advancing freedom. She was happiest in the company of young people who were driven by ideas and saw no limits on what could be achieved with application and effort.
She leaves in the liberal movement a gap that is impossible for any other individual to fill. And yet, the countless hundreds of new, young ambassadors for freedom that she inspired and developed will carry on her work in different ways but with no less vigour, commitment, kindness and humility.