ABSTRACT
The central contradiction of Thatcherism, between its economic liberalism, setting the individual free to pursue his or her ends wherever possible, and its moral conservatism, attempting to restore authority in a world that was becoming irreducibly pluralistic. The effects were at first more muted and fragmented in Britain than elsewhere, whether in terms of student radicalism or immediate political conservatism. 'The personal is political' was, despite its ambiguities, a central slogan of the new sexual radicalism, and for second-wave feminism. Moreover, on a world-wide scale, AIDS was clearly a heterosexual phenomenon. The analysis behind the concept of gay liberation suggested the arbitrary nature of sexual categories, the artificial limitation of a range of possible sexualities by restrictive moral norms. The new moralism was indeed part of a general reaction against the social democratic consensus that had dominated the post-war world.
