Samizdata has published some photos of our dinner last night celebrating 25 years since the abolition of exchange controls, held at Westminster's St Ermin's Hotel.

(Added 24/10) Dr Eamonn Butler writes "It was a splendid occasion, with 50 of the Institute's insiders coming together to hear Lord Howe (who announced the abolition of exchange controls to the House of Commons exactly 25 years ago), and Lord Lawson (his deputy at the time, and one of the intellectual forces behind the decision).

"What came over most strongly was the sense that these policymakers were sailing through uncharted waters at the time. Exchange controls had been in place so long that nobody could imagine the world without them. Indeed, it took a while before the press and politicians had come to realize exactly what Geoffrey Howe had actually said on that momentous day. People worried that capital flows would be uncontrollable. That huge amounts of money would leach abroad. William Keegan, the prominent financial journalist, predicted that controls would have to come back within a handful of years. They were all wrong.

"Samizdata's Perry de Havilland also gave a short talk: telling how his parents used to sneak money out of the country stuffed inside his nappies! It truly is hard to believe the crazy economics of the late 1970s, when income-tax was 98 pence in the pound."