Biography
He was born Dunfermline, Scotland, the son of an accountant and schoolteacher. He attended Bradford Grammar School, and read geology, then economics, at the University of St Andrews.
He embraced libertarianism whilst a student, and became involved in the Conservation Association. Under his leadership, he built up the St Andrews University Conservatives into a powerful group which dominated conferences of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS). It used its influence to lobby the party nationally for more market-based policies; the association published pamphlets calling for the sale of the Post Office; for the legalisation of the offshore "pirate" broadcasting stations; abolishing exchange controls; and ending council house subsidies.
Following his graduation from university, Mason settled in Glenrothes in the 1960s. Mason became a constituency agent for the Conservative Party, and he served on Fife County Council from 1967 to 1970 and on Kirkcaldy District Council from 1974 to 1988. In the 1983 general election, he stood unsuccessfully as Conservative candidate for Central Fife, a safe labour seat.
He did his most influential work for Adam Smith Institute, run by fellow St Andrews alumni Dr Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler who founded the institute in 1977. Mason became one of its regular authors. In 1982, he led the Adam Smith Institute's "Omega Project" report on Local Government Policy. There he argued for the compulsory contracting-out of most local services such as refuse collection, proposed scrapping the existing local-government tax, in favour of a per-capita charge. Other policy recommendations included the privatisation of the Royal Mail The Last Post (1991); the privatisation of free British reading Ex Libris (1986); the privatisation of the Forestry Commission the complete removal of arts subsidies Expounding The Arts (1987), abolition of restrictions on drinking Time To Call Time (1986), and that ending free reading in public libraries Ex Libris (1986).
In 1989, before the handover of Hong Kong to China, Mason proposed the creation of a 'New Hong Kong', located off the west coast of Scotland, in which Hong Kong Chinese holding British passports would be able to settle. The idea was ridiculed by George Galloway, then Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, as 'bizarre and unbelievable'.
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