Introduction

This chapter aims to provide an alternative perspective on the Western new left (NL) as distinct from currently established right-wing and left-wing versions. Movement theorists have argued in relation to the NL that its history and its theory must arise from the participants, from the movement itself, and not in abstraction. The earlier period of the NL has tended to be neglected by later writers; in the American context O’Brien, for example, claims that ‘as a coherent movement the NL may be said to have existed only from I965–9’. The NL, despite its subsequent rapprochement with Marxism and even Stalinism, has to be understood initially as a reaction to the Old Left, and to bureaucratic Communism;. The chapter focuses on the two societies, Britain and America, where the NL first emerged. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.