ABSTRACT
To understand the political significance of the new urban left, it is necessary to grasp the depth of the Labour Party's crisis in the early 1980s. Even before Margaret Thatcher's first general election in 1979, perceptive commentators warned that the new right was connecting to dynamic social currents in British society, whereas Labour was locked into downward spiral of decline. The urban left in London gained increased influence partly in response to rapid economic change. Battle lines over gender, by contrast, were not as clear cut as they were over sexuality. The urban left had chauvinist elements, while the radical right in Britain was less centrally involved in the backlash against women's liberation than its counterpart in the United States. It was also mobilised through negative portrayals of feminism. Indeed, one of the ways in which the urban left was attacked was to portray it as the sponsor of 'loony' feminist follies such as 'judo mats for lesbians' in Islington.
