Currents of neo-liberalism: British political ideologies and the New Right, c. 1955-79

Journal article

This article investigates the emergence of neo-liberalism in Britain and its intellectual relationship with each of the three main British political ideologies. The article distinguishes between different currents of neo-liberalism that have been absorbed into British political thought, and shows that this process to some extent pre-dated the electoral success of Thatcherism in the 1980s. The article further suggests that labelling recent British political discourse as unvarnished ‘neo-liberalism’, while at times analytically useful, simplifies a more complicated picture, in which distinctively neo-liberal ideas have been blended in different ways into the ideologies of British Liberalism, Conservatism and even Labour socialism. The article therefore turns the spotlight on a more obscure aspect of the making of British neo-liberalism by exploring how politicians and intellectuals of varying partisan stripes generated policy discourses that presented neo-liberal ideas as an authentic expression of their own ideological traditions. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this article, then, is that neo-liberalism, although frequently characterised as rigid and dogmatic, has in fact proved itself to be a flexible and adaptable body of ideas, capable of colonising territory right across the political spectrum.

Authors: Jackson, B

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: English Historical Review
• Volume: 131
• Issue: 551
• Pages: 823-850
• Publication date: 2016-08-18
• Acceptance date: 2016-06-02
• DOI: 10.1093/ehr/cew237
• EISSN: 1477-4534
• ISSN: 0013-8266