Letter: The 'new right' misrepresents Adam Smith

I AM delighted that someone has finally dared to set the record straight on the calumnies the 'new right' has been spreading about Adam Smith ('I see, said the blind man', 13 March). Since I am a Kirkcaldy-born man, it has always irked me that the philosophy of Smith, born in a period of enlightenment, should be so misrepresented by those without his intellectual vigour or humanitarianism.

If it is acceptable for 'The Adam Smith Institute' to misuse and abuse Smith's name by their narrow interpretation of part of his economic philosophy, it must, by the same measure, and with reference to the famous 'no such thing as society' utterance, be all right for some future terrorist, anarcho-syndicalist group to call itself the 'Margaret Thatcher faction'.

James McGinley

Brighton