I am the Woolman's Son

Four years ago in March my father died. He'd worked to try and keep a West Yorkshire mill afloat, and finally threw down the struggle in autumn 1987, just before the market collapsed. He was a smoker, and they put 'emphysema' on his post mortem, but it's more likely he died of a particularly bad panic attack.

I was brought up counting the factory chimneys, and waiting for the mills to close. My father loved his golf, and his clubhouse happened to be the house of Richard Oastler, factory reformer and abolitionist. In my teens I read his testimonies. I also read the volume of Hayek my father gave me when I was 16 - the only, and right book I needed at the time.

Now I work my family's passage analysing Asian economies for money managers of various degrees of aggression and success. And I attend my local Quaker meeting. Earlier this year I attended a Quakers in Business meeting in Manchester, and came away largely dissatisfied with the comfort and ease with which a consensus of the virtue of the public and 'third' sectors was assumed, as was the evil of the financial sector. 'We don't get many Quakers from the financial sector' I was told.

I didn't agree then, and I don't agree now. Finance is a weighty matter, and the early Quakers knew it. But if you take it seriously, as you should, because it will certainly take you seriously, and if, moreover, you have Libertarian instincts, then there's some thinking to be done. What's more, I have the legacy of John Bellers, Quaker and economic thinker, to wrestle with.

Here's where I'll do it. I am the woolman's son.