This article stands as both a correction and a supplement to Free Life Commentary number 18 , which I issued last Friday.

Last Tuesday the 30th July 1998, I read in the "Londoner's Diary" section of The Evening Standard that Dr Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute was applying for membership of the Labour Party. I made this claim the basis for a speech that I gave the next evening to the Society for Individual Freedom. I then wrote down what I had said and published it as a Free Life Commentary, issuing it on the Internet and faxing a copy to the Adam Smith Institute.

At 10:00 am this morning, I was called by Dr Pirie. He said he was upset by my repetition of the claim about his joining the Labour Party. "I am not, nor ever have been, a member of the Conservative Party" he told me. "Nor am I about to join the Labour Party. There is no truth in this claim whatever."

I was both embarrassed and surprised by the call. I was surprised because in the twelve years that I have known Dr Pirie, I have never observed him to be at all tolerant of criticism; and mine had been a rather savage attack. I had expected an entry in his "bastards book", complaints to all our common friends, and the cold shoulder at every event in the future to which we might both be invited. A calm telephone call to put me right on the immediate cause of my attack was the last thing I had expected. And I was embarrassed because I had got that immediate cause wrong. I apologised for having believed the story in The Evening Standard, and promised that I would issue a correction. I emphasised that my general opinion of him and the Adam Smith Institute was unchanged, but accepted that I had been unjust in repeating the claim that he wished to join the Labour Party.

However, rather than sit straight down to write my apology, I decided to call The Evening Standard. I know that newspapers are poor sources of information, but was curious that a story could be so detailed and apparently credible, yet also quite false. I wanted to know how the story had been accepted for publication.

I got through to John McKie, who works in the "Londoner's Diary" section. "We stand 100 per cent by our story" he said. He added that Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party had got the same story from a different source. I asked him about the gushing endorsement of New Labour that had been ascribed to Dr Pirie. "I am not able to say how or from where the words were reported" came the reply, "but I have no reason to doubt that they were accurately reported." When I pressed him and explained Dr Pirie's denial, Mr McKie admitted that the words might have been uttered satirically, but insisted that they had been uttered.

I cannot believe that Dr Pirie would tell me a direct lie. If he denies any intention of joining the Labour Party, I take his word without further question. I do not entirely disbelieve The Evening Standard story, but am inclined to suspect that a joke has been misunderstood and then worked up into a story that was reported in good faith, but that was still untrue in its central claim.

And so I apologise to Dr Pirie for any inconvenience that he may have suffered by my repetition of the story. It is an unforced apology, as I have nothing to fear or to hope from him. He has no grounds for taking legal action against me. Even were he petty enough to try, there are very limited social sanctions he can apply against me. Had I decided to ignore his complaint, he has no easy means himself of putting his case before the readers of Free Life Commentary . I apologise though it embarrasses me in front of my readers. I apologise because I think it is the right thing to do.

This being said, I only apologise for the story about joining the Labour Party. I repeat that my general opinion of Dr Pirie and the Adam Smith Institute remains unchanged. Setting aside any rhetoric, and considered in the light of their achievements, they have helped in the transformation of England from a semi-bankrupt mixed economy to a quite prosperous police state. Looking through the Adam Smith Institute's catalogue of reports, I accept that the parts are often liberal. Nevertheless, the whole has added up to a kind of soft fascism. This is because a fundamental truth has been overlooked—a truth known to every decent cook or physician: that the value of what is done cannot be separated from the order in which it is done. A cake is not made by mixing the fruit and sugar, letting them stand, and then adding the eggs and flour just before baking. A broken leg is not mended by splinting it, and then hoping to set it some time later in the day. Equally, a liberal order is not restored by pushing market reforms in isolation from what already exists.

I have already illustrated this point with my view of prison privatisation—that while prisons will be private in a free society, to privatise them now is to raise further barriers on the road to freedom. The same can be said in other areas. Take road pricing and security cameras in public places, both of which Dr Pirie has endorsed at various times. In a free society, these would be unquestionably good. The roads would be privately owned, and charges would be imposed for their use. At the same time, the various owners of the roads would try to minimise on policing costs by putting up security cameras. There is nothing wrong with either.

But we do not live in a free society. Already, the authorities have almost automatic access to any photographed image. Already, it is technically—though not yet financially—possible to have a security camera identify people by the patterns of blood vessels that show up on their faces through an ultra-violet filter. Within a decade on present trends, our blood vessel patterns will be stored in a central database beside our National Insurance Numbers and all other information thought useful by our masters. Security cameras, urged on Michael Howard in the mid-1990s as a cheap alternative to police patrolling, will have taken us into a richer, softer version of Airstrip One.

The same will happen with road pricing. Road use will be paid for not by having drivers stop at tolls and buy tickets, but by issuing them with smartcards that will meter their use of private motorways, and allow them to be sent a monthly bill. It will also allow the authorities to know exactly where drivers are at any minute on the roads.

In even a semi-free society, none of this would greatly matter. The main use of mass-surveillance would be to uphold the laws against force and fraud. In our society, mass-surveillance will give the authorities the first real means of enforcing health fascism and political correctness. I am told that British anti-EU activists are filmed whenever they demonstrate against another power grab by the New World Order types in Brussels. The pictures are then matched up with names and kept on file for some purpose yet to be revealed. I know that the more advanced social workers are coming to regard smoking at home as a form of "child abuse": let them see from digital surveillance films how much parents smoke in public, and midnight raids to kidnap children will become as common and as feared as adult arrests were in the more obvious tyrannies of the past.

All this and more will be the consequence of market reforms made out of order. Instead of helping dismantle the machinery of statist control, the Adam Smith Institute has been acting as an efficiency expert for the State. Whether or not Dr Pirie was thinking of joining the Labour Party is of no importance against this central fact. I gladly withdraw and apologise for the lesser charge. The graver charge, however, requires a defence. I do not think that one will be given. Nor do I think one can be given.

In closing, I must emphasise the point made at the bottom of all these articles. Free Life Commentary is entirely separate from the Libertarian Alliance. Its contents are written by me. Nobody else reads it before publication. If any sanctions are to be applied for what I have written, justice requires that they should be applied to me alone.