Most Americans probably would not recognize the name Lord Harris of High Cross. But Highcross, who died yesterday morning, was an architect of Thatcherism and one of the greatest friends in Europe of the idea of American-style economic freedom.

Harris, a British economist, died of a heart attack in England. He was born Ralph Harris in a North London blue collar family in 1924. In 1955 Harris founded the Institute of Economic Affairs, Britain’s major free market think tank, which became the intellectual powerhouse of the Thatcher Revolution.

Harris was an ardent Christian whose faith persuaded him that the liberalization of economic structures was the key to feeding the poor and housing the homeless. Harris used to argue that “in order to be able to give a coat to those who have none, one must have been in a position to earn two in the first place. To focus purely on the need ignored the reality that wealth creation is the most effective means by which the plight of the poor may be eased.”

In 1989 he organized the Bruges Group in order to defend Britain’s sovereignty and its democratic traditions against the unelected Brussels bureaucracy of the European Union. It took the sobriquet Bruges Group after Prime Minister Thatcher, in 1988, gave a speech at Bruges, in Belgium, warning of the dangers for Britain of what was happening in Brussels.

He held to the view the unaccountable and unelected bureaucracy in Brussels was damaging to the interests of the United Kingdom, as well as those of other European Union member states. He presided for years at the offices of his institute in Lord North Street in Westminster, where there gathered at his table visiting parliamentarians, economists, philosophers and journalists. They came not only from Britain but from all over Europe and even America.