The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (182 page)

See
NEP
.

 
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Originally a label given to (but not by) supporters of Neil Kinnock's changes in the Labour Party between 1985 and 1992. The label was then adopted as a brand by Tony Blair and his circle on Blair's accession to the party leadership in 1994 and to power in 1997, Blair then saying ‘We were elected as New Labour, and will govern as New Labour’.
Kinnock first expelled hard-left Marxists from the party, then set about changing party policies which he believed had caused voters to defect from Labour to the Liberal-Social Democrat Alliance. The party abandoned unilateralism, distanced itself from the trade unions, and embraced the market. John Smith (Labour Party leader 1992–4) was more traditionalist, but Blair launched the theme ‘New Labour, New Britain’ at his first party conference in 1994. Blair barely concealed his admiration for Margaret Thatcher's programme of privatization, regulation of trade unions and deregulation of utilities. In 1997 the Conservatives unsuccessfully tried to turn the slogan back on its creators as ‘New Labour, New Danger’. In social policy, New Labour has attempted to reduce social exclusion by a mixture of targeted tax changes and moralizing. The moralizing blinded many to the fact that the targeting of the socially excluded helped to make the 1997 administration one of the most redistributive governments in British history.
IM 

 
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Generic term encompassing diverse challenges to the doctrines, methods of organization, and styles of leadership of the ‘old’
left
.
The New Left emerged from the disintegration of Soviet hegemony over the international communist movement as shown by the de-Stalinization process begun at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in 1956; the East European revolts, Soviet response to them and the repercussions this had within individual communist parties, and the challenges made by Trotskyist and Maoist parties to Soviet ideological control. The Cuban Revolution of 1959, and anticolonial struggles in Africa and Asia suggested to some that there were different strategies of revolution and that other social groups, apart from the industrial proletariat, could be the agents of revolutionary change. Students, women, black power groups, and anti-Vietnam War activists in Europe and the United States mobilized, and claimed the support of peasants and ‘lumpenproletariat’ in the Third World. The apogee of the New Left was witnessed in 1968 in the May ‘events’ in Paris, and its nadir in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the end of ‘socialism with a human face’ there.
The New Left's emphasis upon spontaneity left it vulnerable to fragmentation and an eclectic set of groups each with distinct agendas. However it left its mark on
feminism
,
green parties
,
Eurocommunism
, and a renaissance in intellectual thought on the left ( see
Guevara
,
Marcuse
, and
Gramsci
, as well as renewed interest in Marx's views on
alienation
and the
state
).
GS 

 
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Theorists who stress the efficacy of the free market for economic and political freedom. The main principles of new-right philosophy can be found in the works of
Hayek
and the American economist Milton Friedman. Some writers also consider J. M. Buchanan and the public choice school to be part of the new right. Buchanan's school differs in important ways from those discussed here, but shares its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal antecedents. The new right are ‘new’ not in the sense that their theories have no precedent. Indeed, they draw on Adam
Smith
and closely reflect the preoccupations of nineteenth-century liberal thought. They can only be considered ‘new’ when contrasted with the ‘old right’ preoccupations with tradition, moderation, and support for the postwar political consensus.
These theories had a strong influence on the political process at the end of the 1970s particularly in Britain and, with the advent of the Reagan administration, the United States. Within the British Conservative Party Margaret Thatcher and her intellectual mentor Sir Keith Joseph led a faction which adopted new-right thinking while in parliamentary opposition. The conflict between ‘new’ and ‘old’ right can be clearly encapsulated in her successful assault on the Tory leadership. The ‘old right’, personified in senior party figures such as her predecessor Edward Heath , were sidelined and surreptitiously depicted as being an accessory in Britain's economic and political decline. Their commitment to the corporate consensus of the postwar period was seen as the most damning evidence for Conservative failure to face up to harsh realities. For the new right this could only be done by an all out attack on those institutions that were seen to interfere with free market clearing. These included trade unions, the government itself, in terms of interventionist economic policy, and excessive state expenditure, particularly in terms of welfare payments.
Monetarism
, which emphasizes the need for strict control of the money supply to curb inflation, was also advanced as a main policy objective. A further, even more radical, aim was to eliminate socialism both as a philosophical doctrine and as a possible practical alternative to competitive capitalism.
Hayek's
The Road To Serfdom
, written in the early 1940s, and
The Constitution of Liberty
, published in the 1960's, made a sustained attack on what he described as, ‘state socialism’. Hayek equated socialism with central economic planning. However, he offers a proviso by indicating that market mechanisms can only work properly in the right social and moral context. To this end, and ironically reminiscent of ‘old right’ thinking, he stresses the importance of tradition in passing on the cumulative knowledge and experience of previous generations.
The attack on trade union power within the economy has its theoretical basis in Friedman's critique of the supposed trade-offs between lower unemployment and higher levels of inflation. Friedman argued that such trade-offs were possible only on a short-run basis. In the long run, the ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’ (NAIRU), or natural rate of unemployment, indicates the equilibrium real wage at which the labour that is voluntarily supplied matches the amount of labour that firms voluntarily employ. Any unemployment at the natural rate is therefore frictional and structural. For Friedman the latter can only be dissipated by reducing the natural rate itself by attacking those institutions which interfere with the supply of labour. Hence, trade union power is particularly targeted because it restricts the unemployed from offering to work at a wage lower than the one determined at the natural rate. Only when this power is reduced will the labour market become more competitive and the natural rate of unemployment be reduced. This argument underlies the political attack on the trade unions from 1979 onwards within Britain.
The welfare state is another significant institution which has been a particular target for the new right. In particular the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a ‘think tank’ based in Britain, propagated and expanded on Friedman's arguments in
Capitalism and Freedom
. Although these writers, along with Friedman, suggest that a free market system would overcome such difficulties Hayek is more sceptical. He criticizes the reduction in freedom which taxation for the maintenance of the welfare state produces but suggests that some of its aims can be fulfilled without limiting personal liberty. Surprisingly, Hayek suggests that government can fulfil this, and many other roles, as long as it does not operate through a centralized monopoly.
The new-right belief in the self-regulating and beneficial nature of the free market is seen as too optimistic especially when observed in practice. However, aspects of new-right doctrines still find their way into the policies of many administrations throughout the world.
IF