Few journalists have had as great an influence—or been proved right so often—as the man who, for 23 years, was the deputy editor of The Economist

Jun 17th 2010

WHEN Norman Macrae died on June 11th, aged 89, no major British newspaper published an obituary of him. You could blame The Economist’s tradition of anonymity; you could blame the extraordinary modesty of the man himself who, if you tried to take his photo, would duck down and giggle, convinced that no one could possibly be interested in him.
Yet Norman was one of the intellectual giants of post-war Britain: one of the very few journalists who could bear comparison with the best brains of his time. Like Milton Friedman, he applied free-market principles to public services such as education and council housing. Like Daniel Bell, he charted the shift from the industrial to the post-industrial society. And like Peter Drucker he illuminated the internal workings of companies, the organisations that drove the West’s prosperity and guaranteed its freedoms.
He kept the flame of free-market thinking burning during the long night of collectivism. He predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, at a time when the CIA was obsessed by Russia’s growing strength, and foresaw the privatisation of industry, when other intellectuals were celebrating the triumph of the “mixed economy”.
Norman was the first journalist to “discover” Japan. In 1962 he wrote a survey predicting that a country most Westerners regarded as synonymous with knick-knacks and knock-offs would become an industrial power-house. He was also the first journalist to “discover” the internet. In 1984 he wrote another survey arguing that life was about to be transformed by “terminals” which would give users access to giant databases. He predicted that the 1973 energy shock would eventually lead to a surge in the supply of energy. He also dismissed the Club of Rome’s prediction that the world was about to run out of food as arrant nonsense.
The Economist was fortunate that Norman decided to park his formidable intellect at 25 St James’s Street. During his almost 40 years here—23 of them, from 1965 to 1988, as deputy editor—he did more than anyone else to provide the intellectual originality of what he liked to describe as “the world’s favourite viewspaper”. He constantly enlivened editorial meetings with proposals to allow Disneyworld to run the West’s cities or to move the British government from London to York. Roy Jenkins rightly described him as the “epitome of the internal spirit of The Economist”.
He could be a brutal editor and a savage critic of flabby ideas. He altered colleagues’ copy with abandon. But he was greatly liked, generous with his time and amiable in conversation. He was also a loyal company man, never allowing his growing renown to go to his head. He frequently slept in his office, his large frame heaped on the floor, and sweated blood to correct errant facts as well as to expunge creeping heresy. More than anyone else, he made sure that The Economist was not blown off course by the winds of ideological fashion or becalmed in routine