Globalisation:Antony Fisher

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Despite having a relatively normal upbringing for someone of that era, there was no single person that was more important in encouraging the spread of think tanks than Sir Antony Fisher. A Royal Air Force pilot in World War II and successful businessman, Fisher sought advice from Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek on how to stop the spread of collectivism and to encourage a resurgence of classical liberal ideas. "Don't go into politics, Focus instead on the world of ideas" is what Hayek told him. It is from this that fisher was able to build such a successful career devoting the most of it to promoting and establishing such institutes as the international policy network and notable other overseas ones such the ones found in Links to other organisations

Biography

Early Life

Fisher grew up in the South East of England and was educated at Eton and Cambridge. From here he volunteered for the RAF at the start of World War II until the death of his brother during the battle which grounded Fisher. This led him to a change in direction and, combined with his already heavy passion for politics, an article he found in one of his many copies of Reader’s Digest led him towards a career which would eventually prove to alter the way in which the progression of globalisation would happen through the gradual setting up of think tanking institutes around the world. To understand what Fisher contributed, no matter how intentional, to the general advancement of globalisation it is important to go back to what gave him the desire to make a change in day to day society. It began when he found a condensed version of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in an edition of Reader's Digest in 1945. It was only having read the work and agreeing strongly enough with his words that Fisher decided to pursue the matter by meeting Hayek himself at his office in the London School of Economics. It was at this meeting where a key conversation took place: “What can I do? Should I enter politics?’” is what Fisher asks when he entered, to which Hayek responds “No, society’s course will be changed only by a change in ideas. First you must reach the intellectuals, the teachers and writers, with reasoned argument. It will be their influence on society which will prevail, and the politicians will follow” . It was from this that Fisher decided that the best way to act on Hayek’s advice would be to set up an independent research institute to specifically bring innovative market-based perspectives to issues of public policy. It was here in 1955 when he founded the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. . This can be seen as one of the first vectors on which he was able to carry globalisation around the world. Assuming the definition of globalisation used by Ulrich Beck is correct and that as a phenomenon it is irreversible, then it is important to understand why so. This irreversibility has a whole host of different reasons but one which is important and most relevant to Antony Fisher is that of the emergence of a post-national, polycentric world politics, in which actors (corporations and NGOs) are growing in power and number alongside governments .

Legacy

Fisher supplied money which started and maintained an annual think tank conference. By the time of his death, he had helped start more than 3 dozen think tanks