Sean Gabb is a writer and broadcaster and academic. He is the author of around fifteen books, which include seven novels and three volumes of poetry. He has been commercially translated into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Slovak, Hungarian and Chinese.
He joined the Libertarian Alliance in 1979. He became the Director in 2006, shortly before the death of its founder Chris Tame.
Gabb is for the legalization of drugs and is an opponent of multiculturalism and mass immigration as a political policy. He sees no harm in gay marriage or gay adoption, but defends the need to be able to speak in open criticism of homosexuality as part of his stance for freedom of speech from political interference. He is an isolationist in foreign affairs (he is as much anti-American as Eurosceptic) and an advocate of the widest social and economic liberty. He has written in support of the monarchy and House of Lords, in defence of the rights of holocaust deniers and in enabling a time limitation law on the charge of child abuse.
Gabb is controversial to some because of his views, for example: "the Commission for Racial Equality and all similar organisations should be abolished, and their records burned." Gabb explained this by often likening the British government to a police state, saying, "Every so often, someone stands up and tells us what benefits we have had from diversity. Such may be, but we must also consider that part of the price has been a police state. In this country, we have severe restrictions on freedom of speech, on freedom of association and on freedom of contract - all in the name of good race relations." He compared the government to a police state as far back as 1989, when he wrote, "The Thatcher Government has brought into being the full coercive apparatus of a police state."
Regarding freedom of speech, Gabb has written: "It is no business of the State to tell people what they can and cannot think. Our bodies are our own. Our minds are our own. What we do with them is our business." He has also said that the government "should cut benefits, taxes and regulation, and leave people alone. The people will do the rest." Gabb is against the European Union. He has said of immigration: "I do not necessarily object if people want to come to this country to look for a new life. I do object if they want this at my expense - at my expense as a tax payer, and at the expense of the constitutional rights which are my birthright."
In favour of free markets, Gabb has taken a position against limited liability corporations on that basis that they shield shareholders from their debt obligations, representing a state subsidy. He said in an Oxfam debate that their creation was "one of the greatest legislative mistakes of the 19th century. Their existence is based on a separation of ownership from control. The owners are released from all responsibility."
The above is adapted from his Wikipedia article. A more informative entry will be supplied when he feels more inspired. In the meantime, please feel welcome to explore a site that contains just over a million words of broadly political writings.
