ABSTRACT
Thatcherism in the late 1970s has been running in political theatres across the
world for nearly three decades now. When Hall (1983 [1978]) initiated the
Gramscian analysis of Thatcherism, when neoliberalism’s anti-state, free-market
and anti-union nostrums could still sound unfamiliar, it may still have appeared
to many as a freakish side-show in a declining industrial democracy. In the dec-
ades since then the might of the New Right has swept all before it, making right its
insistence that ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA). Of the many facets of the New
Right – social, political, cultural, ideological and economic – analysts have ten-
ded to emphasise its ideology. Though understandable – it was unusual for right
politics to be ideological and intellectual as the New Right appeared – it con-
veyed the impression that the New Right’s political advance rested mainly on the
intellectual merits of neoliberalism, and on the political influence its exponents
deftly acquired through their now famous networks and think tanks – the ‘world
wide web of neoliberalism’ as the title of the conference originally stimulating this
chapter has it.
