ABSTRACT
This chapter explains inquiries around the central and fundamental question of the place and character of individualism within conservative doctrine a question that has been answered very differently both by thinkers of the New Right and by their conservative critics. It develop arguments that diverges from that of conservative critics of the neo-liberal New Right, such as Roger Scruton, who have perceptively and powerfully criticized the neglect within neo-liberalism of the common culture that founds Western civil society and enables it to reproduce itself across the generations. Neo-liberalism and Thatcherite conservatism are, then, seeking to restore and reproduce an English individualist culture that is our historical inheritance. Thatcherite conservatism has distinguished itself from neo-liberalism, and has established its affinities with American neo-conservatism, by its reiterated emphasis on the familiar and religious values that legitimated capitalist institutions in their Victorian heyday.
