The New Right and the 1980s

Any discussion of the political changes in the west in recent years can only be truly understood when located in a historical context. Social, political and financial trends have led to what we today refer to as globalization; the ethos around which the central tenets (often unknown or nebulously stated) of international trade, finance, market economics, welfare, social policy and socioeconomic organization are currently organized. Perhaps unusually for a discussion on globalization, I am not going to provide a conceptual definition until the next chapter. The reason is that to understand the evolution of today’s international economic and political systems, we need to travel back through recent history, at least as far as the industrial revolution and Victoria’s England. Such a history is bound to be brief, excessively so, and so I apologize to historians who note the complexity of their field of study reduced to a rangy skeleton. However, the purpose of such a discussion is to frame current developments and for this purpose it will suffice.