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Thatcherism is the political project associated with Margaret Thatcher and the New Right. In his 1979 essay “The Great Moving Right Show,” cultural theorist Stuart Hall analyzed it as an emerging radical-right formation trying to reshape political common sense—not merely as Thatcher’s personal style or a checklist of government policies.
What does “Thatcherism” mean?
The term describes a political formation associated with Thatcher and the New Right. Its meaning is contested and tied to a particular historical moment. Hall’s focus was the project taking shape around the Conservative movement, rather than a fixed doctrine that could be defined only by listing policies.
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An abstract for an Oxford thesis on the Conservative Party in opposition from 1974 to 1979 summarizes Hall’s analysis as identifying an emergent radical-right ideology seeking to “command the space” occupied by social democracy and the moderate wing of the Conservative Party. Read the thesis abstract.
What did Hall analyze in “The Great Moving Right Show”?
Hall’s 1979 essay examined how a new political project was emerging and competing for influence. He treated Thatcherism as a developing historical formation: its significance lay in its attempt to shift the terms of political debate and establish a different sense of what counted as common sense.
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That approach matters because it distinguishes the political project from Thatcher herself. It also differs from a policy inventory: Hall was asking how political forces were coming together and changing the terrain on which political arguments were made.
How did Hall read the political moment?
Hall used what is often called conjunctural analysis: interpreting a particular political moment by tracing how distinct but interacting forces and contradictions meet within it. Rather than explaining a change through one cause alone, this method asks how social and political developments combine to make a new formation possible.
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The editors’ introduction to Selected Political Writings describes “The Great Moving Right Show” as a model of contemporaneous conjunctural analysis. Hall was interpreting a shift while it was still unfolding, not writing with knowledge of its eventual outcome. The introduction is available in the editors’ PDF.
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No settled prediction about its duration should be read into the 1979 essay. The editors reproduce Hall’s uncertainty: “There is still some debate, as to whether [Thatcherism] is likely to be short-lived or long-term, a movement of the surface or something more deeply lodged in the body politic”. The bracketed “[Thatcherism]” appears in the reproduced sentence. It captures the uncertainty of the moment, not a claim that Hall already knew how durable the project would be.
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How does the later interpretation differ?
In retrospect, the editors argue that Thatcherism’s longer-term reach became clearer and place it within the making of a political order now described as a neoliberal revolution. This is their later historical interpretation, not a conclusion to attribute directly to Hall’s 1979 essay. Keeping the two perspectives separate preserves what made Hall’s analysis distinctive: he was assessing an unsettled political conjuncture, while later readers can consider its consequences.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where can you read Hall’s essay?
“The Great Moving Right Show” is included in Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays, edited by Sally Davison, David Featherstone, Michael Rustin, and Bill Schwarz. The volume also collects related writing on Thatcherism and neoliberalism. Its inclusion of the 1979 essay is confirmed by Duke University Press and the BiblioVault bibliographic record.
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