Alfred Sherman

Sir Alfred Sherman "was a national security advisor for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Prior to this, he co-founded the Centre for Policy Studies with Lady Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, and later became the British think tank’s director. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics and is a Visiting Fellow at the university."

Alfred Sherman, the son of Jewish immigrants, was born in Hackney in 1919. Influenced by his father's left-wing views, Sherman joined the Communist Party.

Sherman studied chemistry at Chelsea Polytechnic but left to join the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

On his return in 1938 Sherman found work in a London electrical factory. He later joined the Conservative Party and in 1979 established the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies.

In her memoirs Margaret Thatcher 'herself pays tribute to Sherman’s ‘brilliance’, the ‘force and clarity of his mind’, his ‘breadth of reading and his skills as a ruthless polemicist’. She credits him with a central role in her achievements, especially as Leader of the Opposition but also after she became Prime Minister.

Born in 1919 in London’s East End, until 1948 Sherman was a Communist and fought in the Spanish Civil War. But he ended up an indefatigable free-market crusader. The book describes his early relationship with Sir Keith Joseph and his own role in the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974.

Sherman examines the origins and development of ‘Thatcherism’, but concludes that the Conservative administrations of the 1980s were, for the most part, an ‘interlude’ and that the post-war consensus remains largely unscathed — ‘we are back to where we started’'.(From the blurb for Paradoxes of Power Reflections on the Thatcher Interlude, by Alfred Sherman Edited by Mark Garnett )


 * Advisory Board, American Council for Kosovo

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Libertarian Alliance