ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that the standard narratives about the emergence of Cultural Studies in Britain greatly simplify the actual history, the diversity of the work and especially the extent to which it was a retreat from a partial failure or collapse of a political movement in the years1958 to 1963. The New Left was engaged in a second debate about the kind of capitalism that emerged in the post-war period. While the New Left had a kind of fascination with youth culture, it is impossible to separate this from a new movement in fiction, associated with lower-middle-class writers rejecting modernist experiments for a kind of documentary novel. The New Left was fascinated by the figure of youth as a symbol of changes in social class and culture, there was also a vigorous debate about education policy. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was more important for creating a new kind of social movement than for any success in reducing nuclear weapons.