New Times (politics)

New Times was a short-lived intellectual movement among leftists in Great Britain. It was centred on the Eurocommunist faction of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and most of the intellectual groundwork for the movement was laid out in the latter party's official theoretical journal, Marxism Today.

After the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, and especially Czechoslovakia in 1968, many western Communists began to question their allegiance to the Soviet Union. Some disillusioned communists swung to the left and joined Trotskyist parties. Others, led by Enrico Berlinguer's Italian Communist Party (PCI), stayed within the Communist Parties and developed their own critique. This would essentially lead to an expanded version of the "popular front" policies of the 1930s, with a number of CPs attempting to ingratiate themselves to the existing political establishment. The movement came to be known as Eurocommunism.

Whereas Eurocommunist factions in the French and Italian communist parties fairly successfully managed to impose their agenda on the party platforms, things were not so simple in other countries. In Britain, particularly, there were bitter struggles from the 1970s on. The party became divided into 'Euros' and 'tankies' (so called for their support of Soviet interventions in Eastern Bloc countries).

A major coup for the Euros was obtaining control over Marxism Today. Martin Jacques became editor in 1977, and began to publish articles mostly by prominent Eurocommunists. More recently, he cites Eric Hobsbawm's 1978 article "Forward March Of Labour Halted?" as a turning point. In the early 80s, the New Times idea began to emerge. Alongside Jacques, Stuart Hall was highly influential. Articles were published in MT questioning the Left's opposition to consumerism, focus on material production and the industrial working class, and approach to Margaret Thatcher. The term "Thatcherism" is largely attributable to Hall's work in MT, where he argued that she was not 'just another' Tory.

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