Politics and Economics
In opposition to Clement Attlee's Agriculture Act 1947, Smedley helped to found, and become Secretary of, the Farmers' and Smallholders' Association in 1947. Its first President was the Conservative MP Waldron Smithers.
In 1952 Smedley resigned from his job as a Chartered Accountant and campaigned for economic liberalism from his office in EC2. His main campaigning organisation was the Cheap Food League which was against all types of protection and subsidy in agriculture, especially marketing boards. In a protest against high taxation he founded the Council for the Reduction of Taxation in 1954. Then in 1955, whilst a member of the Society of Individualists, Smedley met Antony Fisher and together they founded the Institute of Economic Affairs. Smedley also took over the Free Trade League and the Cobden Club in 1958.
Smedley was also a Liberal politician, standing against Rab Butler in Saffron Walden in the general elections of 1950 and 1951. In all he contested eighteen Parliamentary elections. However, he left the Liberal Party in 1962 due to his opposition to their favourable attitude to British membership of the European Economic Community. He founded the Keep Britain Out campaign to oppose British membership of the EEC. In 1979 he founded the Free Trade Liberal Party.
Read more about this topic: Oliver Smedley
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