Abstract
Conventional ‘left’ accounts of ‘Thatcherism’ have stressed the authoritarian nature of its political rhetoric. This paper suggests that convergences between the ‘new’ conservatism and more fundamentalist moral positions, meeting on the ground of obscenity and violence in the media, are a relatively recent development, associated with renewed strategic concentration on the question of law and order. Indeed, the libertarian right, in adhering to a utilitarian laissez-faire understanding of private pleasures, has presided over a positive proliferation of erotic and other gratifications. We argue that in the United Kingdom the authentic constituency of the ‘moral right’ is an increasingly socially marginal one, rendered progressively more so by the rapid development of technologies of communication and entertainment.
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Pratt, J., Sparks, R. New voices from the ship of fools. Contemporary Crises 11, 3–23 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728662
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728662