Neoliberal Britain?

In newspapers, political commentary, popular culture, and public debate, “neoliberalism” is everywhere. We live, so these debates say, in neoliberal times. But no one seems to be able to agree on the obvious question that follows: what is neoliberalism and how did it come to exercise such a pervasive influence on politics, economics, and society? In this class, we will explore the theory and the history of “neoliberalism” in one particular context: Britain since the 1970s. As the site of one of the most drastic turns to neoliberalism under Margaret Thatcher, Britain offers a particularly good case study to examine both the nature of neoliberalism and its relationship to the major social changes of the late twentieth century. This class thus explores not only the rise of Thatcherism and neoliberalism but also how neoliberalism in Britain was shaped by empire and decolonization, feminism and new gender roles, deindustrialization and unemployment, racism and policing, popular democracy and protest in the welfare state. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, including Stuart Hall, Bea Campbell, the Race Today Collective, and the Institute for Economic Affairs as well as records of everyday lives and “ordinary” experiences, we will interrogate the social conflicts and political transformations that did – and did not – make Britain neoliberal. In doing so, this class doubles as both an introduction to the political history of neoliberalism and to the social history of Britain in the late twentieth century.