The British New Left

by Chun Lin

A scholarly and sympathetic treatment of the rise and fall of the British New Left, which was relatively separate from the international movements of the 1960s. Describes the post-war advance of capitalism in which the movement rose during the 1950s, the major writing and thinking, and the evolution of concerns from traditions and culture through society and politics to history and theory. Distributed in the US by Columbia U. Press. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Theory

256 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I prefer this to Michael Kenny's book on the New Left, not just because Lin Chun works with a longer timeframe, but she also gives a richer sense of the different strands of deliberation and debate, and I suppose brings the whole formation to life a bit better. I do, however, agree with Dorothy Thompson's objection to both books, that Kenny and Chun miss the importance of culture-- not even just commentary or aesthetic theory but straightforward cultural production-- especially as regards the New Reasoner and Universities & Left Review into early New Left Review moment. There's some cursory stuff on the Angry Young Men, etc., but seems like there's so much more to say about the links to Free Cinema, the British New Wave, Royal Court drama, folk, jazz, and so on. Anyway, the highlights for me were Chun's account of the importation of 'Western Marxism' to Britain, the material on Ken Coates and the Institute for Workers' Control, and the contextualising of Juliet Mitchell's work within the death throes, I guess, of the British New Left. I read Mitchell as an undergrad and I've even taught her, but never had much sense of where she was coming from as a thinker, so that was great.