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Beschrijving
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Geschiedenis
As a result of Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech denouncing Joseph Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, many abandoned the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and began to rethink its orthodox Marxism. Some joined various Trotskyist groupings or the Labour Party.
The Marxist historians E. P. Thompson and Ralph Miliband established the Communist Party Historians Group and a dissenting journal within the CPGB called Reasoner. Once expelled from the party, they began the New Reasoner from 1957. In 1960, this journal merged with the Universities and Left Review to form the New Left Review. These journals attempted to synthesise a theoretical position of a revisionist, humanist, socialist Marxism, departing from orthodox Marxist theory. This publishing effort made the ideas of culturally oriented theorists available to an undergraduate reading audience. In this early period, many on the New Left were involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed in 1957.
Under the long-standing editorial leadership of Perry Anderson, the New Left Review popularised the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and other forms of Marxism. Other periodicals like Socialist Register, started in 1964, and Radical Philosophy, started in 1972, have also been associated with the New Left, and published a range of important writings in this field.
As the campus orientation of the American New Left became clear in the mid to late 1960s, the student sections of the British New Left began taking action. The London School of Economics became a key site of British student militancy. The influence of protests against the Vietnam War and of the May 1968 events in France were also felt strongly throughout the British New Left. Some within the British New Left joined the International Socialists, which later became Socialist Workers Party while others became involved with groups such as the International Marxist Group.The politics of the British New Left can be contrasted with Solidarity, UK, which continued to focus primarily on industrial issues.