DOUGLAS Mason, who has just died in Kirkcaldy aged 63, is a reminder of the Scottish roots of much of the Thatcher revolution. Mason himself, while at St Andrews University, made the student Conservative Association into an intellectual powerhouse whose graduates included such influential figures as Lord Forsyth, former secretary of state for Scotland, and Allan Stewart MP, who served as a minister at both the trade and Scottish offices. The group also featured other MPs, including Michael Fallon, Robert Jones and Christopher Chope. From the same St Andrews stable came other associates, including Madsen Pirie and Eamonn and Stuart Butler, who founded the Adam Smith Institute.
Mason was born in Dunfermline of Scottish parents in 1941. His father's work took him to England, and Mason attended Bradford Grammar School before returning to Scotland in 1960 to read for a BSc in geology at St Andrews. He was an enthusiast for market economics at a time when a mixed economy was in favour by both Conservative and Labour parties. His St Andrews Conservatives found themselves at odds with the party establishment in England and Scotland. Mason's organising abilities soon gave the association a national impact, however.
In 1967 he stood for the Fife County Council seat of Rimbleton in Glenrothes, and was elected as the first Conservative councillor north of the border.
Other successes for the St Andrews group attracted the party's attention, including the fact that, in the 1968 year of student unrest, the St Andrews Conservatives were becoming the largest student party group in the whole of the UK.
Mason went on to represent the Glenwood ward of Glenrothes, where he chose to make his home after leaving St Andrews. He served on Kirkcaldy District Council (19741988) was a member of the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee (1978-80) and represented Glenrothes on the NewTowns Development Corporation (1985-1996).
He combined his local government careerwith the role of organising secretary for the local Conservative Party (1969-77), and was Conservative Candidate forCentral Fife in the 1983 general election. He later established himself as an antiquarian book dealer, and worked as a parliamentary research assistant (1979-1997), helping both Allan Stewart and Lord Forsyth.
He continued his St Andrews connection, being first elected to the University General Council's Business Committee in 1965, and eventually serving as its convener (1993-2000). He published articles about the university's student history, and in 1985 co-edited City in the Mist, a collection of writings about St Andrews by its students.
In the 1980s he contributed to many Adam Smith Institute publications, and worked on a number of its projects, including its Omega Report of 1983, which set out a programme for the re-elected Thatcher government. In the local government section of that project he called for domestic rates to be replaced by a per capita charge on residents. Mason had already advocated this in articles and lectures, but he now found a ready ear in a government faced by a mounting rates crisis. Mason became noted as the architect of the poll tax, which was later enacted.
Although Mason had wanted the poll tax phased in over 10 years with a spending freeze by local authorities, he still supported the changeover, and was a vociferous opponent of its abolition. He thought it had been given insufficient time to prove itself, and was scornful of the council tax that replaced it, describing it as a tax on unrealised and unrealisable wealth.
The poll taxwas only one of a series of Mason initiatives which helped turn the UK towards free markets and deregulation in the 1980s. He published works on local government deregulation, including The Qualgo Complex (1984) and Licensed to Live (1988), and on local government reorganisation with Shedding a Tier (1989). In Ex Libris (1986) he urged charges for borrowing popular fiction from libraries, and for an end to arts subsidies in Expounding the Arts (1987).
His Time to Call Time (1986) helped persuade the government to liberalise licensing laws in England along the more relaxed Scottish lines.
Mason's University Challenge (1986) paved the way for university fees and loans in England.
He opposed Scottish devolution, predicting parochialism and rule by "second-rate" politicians in Edinburgh. In his 1989 paper, A Home for Enterprise, he mischievously advocated allowing Hong Kong citizens who feared Chinese rule to set up home in Scotland, claiming this would reenergise Scottish enterprise.
His sense of humour was one of his many endearing traits, which included a scholarly courtesy. He was a jazz enthusiast, with a large personal collection.
Even larger was his collection of science fiction, a passion which had engaged him since boyhood.
Douglas Mason; born September 30, 1941, died December 13, 2004.
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