Left Social History–British Versions

The British New Left—at least in its first stage, from 1956 to the early 1960s—did not so much break with the old left as move beyond it. The smoothness of this transition, in contrast to the American experience, is most simply explained by the left’s relative strength before 1956. Politically, the British labor movement, though battered, remained a sufficiently seaworthy vessel for radicals. The British New Left did not seek to supersede the industrial working class but, rather, to...