Sir Antony George Anson Fisher (28 June 1915 – 8 July 1988) was a British businessman and think tank founder. He participated in the formation of various neoliberal organisations during the second half of the 20th century, including the Institute of Economic Affairs and Atlas Network.

Through Atlas Network, Fisher helped establish up to 150 other institutions worldwide. As of 2024, Atlas Network supports and partners with over 500 free-market think tanks in over 100 countries.

Early life

Antony Fisher was born on 28 June 1915 into a wealthy mining family. He was two years old when his father was killed by a sniper in Gaza during World War I. Fisher was educated at Eton College.

World War II

Commissioned as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force on 1 August 1939, Fisher served as a fighter pilot during the Second World War, Shortly after that posting, in April 1940, their cousin Michael Fisher was killed in the Battle of Flanders. which influenced his thinking. Fisher sought out Hayek at the London School of Economics (where he taught) and talked about his plans to go into politics; however, Hayek, convinced him that think tanks were the best medium for effecting political change. In 1952, Fisher took a study trip to the United States, where he visited the new Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). F. A. Harper of the FEE introduced Fisher to former colleagues from the Agriculture Department of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who showed him intensive chicken farming techniques. Fisher was impressed and returned to start England's first battery cage chicken farm, Buxted Chickens, which eventually made him a millionaire.

In 1955, he used his fortune to set up the influential Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) with Ralph Harris. Set up by Fisher and Oliver Smedley, the IEA was founded after Hayek had suggested that an intellectual counterweight through think tanks was necessary to combat the prevailing post-war consensus around Keynesianism and the Butskellism of Rab Butler and Hugh Gaitskell. Fisher, Harris, and others built the IEA and its affiliates of Atlas Network into a bastion of free-market economics and neoliberalism,

In 1968, Fisher looked to expand his battery farm techniques into turtle meat. He founded the company Mariculture Ltd in 1968 in the Cayman Islands due to the tax benefits and the warm climate. Fisher believed that if he could increase the rate of turtle survival from eggs from the low number of 1 in 100 to 1000, then it could be a commercial success. Environmental groups such as Traffic (Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network) and figures like Nicol Duplaix, criticized the farm and accused it of sourcing wild turtles fraudulently. Some politicians were persuaded by these arguments and this led to discussions condemning the farming of turtles. Ultimately, these factors contributed to the failure of the venture, causing Fisher to lose most of the fortune he had gained from selling his chicken business. The experience also fueled his dislike of environmentalists and politicians, who he saw as obstructing innovation through regulation and opposition.

In 1994, Richard Cockett sketched Fisher's role in supporting other emerging think tanks around the world. Cockett writes, "On the strength of his reputation with the IEA, he was invited in 1975 to become co-director of the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, founded by the Canadian businessman T. Patrick Boyle in 1974. Fisher let the young director of the Fraser Institute, Michael Walker, get on with the intellectual output of the Institute (just as he had given free rein to Seldon and Harris at the IEA) while he himself concentrated on the fund-raising side."

References

Bibliography

  • Cockett, Richard (1995). Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983. Fontana Press. .
  • Kwang, Jo (2008). "Fisher, Antony (1915–1988)". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. p. 177. . . . .
  • John Blundell, Waging the War of Ideas, speech to The Heritage Foundation, January 1990
  • Article by Adam Curtis about think tanks, featuring Antony Fisher from the BBC
  • The A Fisher Club from the BBC