Page 234 - Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies

Chapter 11
The meaning of New Times
Stuart Hall

How new are these ‘New Times’? Are they the dawn of a New Age or only
the whisper of an old one? What is ‘new’ about them? How do we assess
their contradictory tendencies—are they progressive or regressive? These
are some of the questions which the ambiguous discourse of ‘New Times’
poses. They are worth asking, not because ‘New Times’ represents a
definitive set of answers to them or even a clear way of resolving the
ambiguities inherent in the idea, but because they stimulate the left to open
a debate about how society is changing and to offer new descriptions and
analyses of the social conditions it seeks to transcend and transform. If it
succeeds in this, but accomplishes nothing else the metaphor of ‘New
Times’ will have done its work.
As the questions suggest, there is considerable ambiguity as to what the
phrase ‘New Times’ really means. It seems to be connected with the
ascendancy of the New Right in Britain, the United States and some parts of
Europe over the past decade. But what precisely is the connection? For
example, are ‘New Times’ a product of ‘the Thatcher revolution’? Was
Thatcherism really so decisive and fundamental? And, if so, does that mean
that the left has no alternative but to adapt to the changed terrain and
agenda of politics, post-Thatcherism, if it is to survive? This is a very
negative interpretation of ‘New Times’: and it is easy to see why those who
read ‘New Times’ in this way regard the whole thing as a smokescreen for
some seismic shift of gravity by the left towards the right.
There is, however, a different reading. This suggests that Thatcherism
itself was, in part, produced by ‘New Times’. On this interpretation, ‘New
Times’ refers to social, economic, political and cultural changes of a deeper
kind now taking place in western capitalist societies. These changes, it is
suggested, form the necessary shaping context, the material and cultural

Reprinted from Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques (eds) New Times, London:
Lawrence & Wishart, 116–33.