Manchester school

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Name given first by its opponents to the Manchester-based campaign to repeal the UK Corn Laws, 1838-46. The campaign mixed the self-interest of employers in export industries (for whom protectionist barriers to free trade in food added to their costs, as they increased the wages that must be paid to prevent working-class families from starving) with arguments of principle for free trade. The label is sometimes applied, less accurately, to any or all of the doctrines of classical economics which were current at the time.

This provided a convenient label to identify many of the 19th-cent. advocates of laissez-faire and, in particular, free trade. Widespread support for free trade developed amongst the manufacturers of the cotton industry in Lancashire and Cheshire. The intellectual focus for this movement included Richard Cobden and John Bright. The initial case for removing mercantilist regulations of trade had been made by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1774).