It was created in 1973 by a group of young libertarian Conservatives, with David Alexander as first chairman and Nicholas Ridley as first president, in order to promote free-market economic policies.
The result of the 1970 discussions was a radical free-market agenda, ridiculed by the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson as the work of "Selsdon Man".
A handful of young libertarian Conservatives, including David Alexander, Stephen Eyres, Philip Vander Elst, Anthony Vander Elst, and Richard S. Henderson created the new group, with Nicholas Ridley as president, in order to uphold and promote the free-market policies that they believed had won the Conservative Party the 1970 general election.
Nicholas Ridley closed his keynote speech at that meeting by citing the "Ten Cannots" of William J. H. Boetcker, adding that it "could well become the guiding principle of the Selsdon Group".
)[1][2] Early members informally stressed that the Group commemorated and advanced the general principles of the Selsdon Declaration, rather than the detail of what they regarded as an inadequate document.