STUDENTS at a college where Gordon Brown has been appointed chancellor are refusing to use the name Adam Smith because they claim the Scottish economist is synonymous with “exploitation and greed”.

The students’ association at Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, renamed following the merger of Fife and Glenrothes colleges last year, has voted unanimously to drop the title.

Instead it will be known as the Jennie Lee Students’ Association after the Lochgelly-born socialist firebrand MP and wife of Nye Bevan.

“We didn’t feel that Adam Smith represented the values a student association should stand for,” said student leader Paul Muirhead.

“He is associated with socio-economic policies that work against the people, that were synonymous with Thatcherite and Reaganite governments.

“Jennie Lee would be an excellent role model for the students because of the courage and conviction she showed in achieving the aims she believed passionately in.

“This isn’t an attack upon Adam Smith as a person, but upon what his name has come to represent. Adam Smith’s name is linked to exploitation and greed.”

The name has still to be given final approval by the college’s board of governors, but a spokesman said it was unlikely to be challenged.

“They are free to call themselves a name of their own choosing. Our new College is all about ‘people’ and so it is fitting that they have named themselves after a local person who has done a great deal of good.”

Marilyn Livingston, the Labour MSP for Kirkcaldy and a former lecturer at Fife College, said she had no difficulties with the name change.

“Jennie Lee is a famous Labour minister who made massive contributions in the education sector,” she said.

A spokesman for Brown said: “It’s really up to the students’ union what they call themselves.”

Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, criticised the decision. “On one level it’s up to them what name they adopt, but it is rather childish and it is based on a complete misunderstanding of what Adam Smith actually believed in,” he said. “It’s actually very hard to pigeonhole him as being right wing.

“His work on the theory of moral sentiment is all about sympathy for people, which isn’t really about being left or right wing at all.”

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