New right as a term is at least over one hundred years old, Mother Jones wrote a book so entitled in 1899. (http://hammer.prohosting.com).
The New Right is a term, which in the extreme sense represents drastic social policy, with beliefs such as, welfare benefits are wasted and only create welfare dependency and those receiving it are beyond help. Accordingly, in a less extreme belief (but still extreme) that "children of poor, single parents should be removed and given to middle-class parents". (http://www.searchlightmagazine.com).
Throughout this essay, we will look at various characteristics of the New Right and what extent the hegemony has receded in the United Kingdom, with reference to Thatcherism (i.e. the combination of New Right ideology and Margaret Thatcher's personal characteristics) and other practitioners of the New Right. Also, we will look at the pragmatic reasons why some policies have outlived the New Right itself.
New Right.
The ideas of liberalism have been analysed and gone through a long period of revisionism, from academics such as, Eduard Bernstein, to Anthony Crosland and many more before them, to eventually transform into neo-liberalism.
"If liberalism was anything, it was committed to the eradication of both domestic and international violence. Free trade between nations from a rational point of view". (McClelland:1996:572).
Enoch Powell may be viewed as the person who originally influenced the Conservative Party to change the radical right. Similarities between Powell and Thatcher are also evident. Powell felt that the state was becoming too large, providing too much but still not reaching the growing expectations of the public government to be scaled down and made more productive. (http://www.essaybank.co.uk). The Conservatives in Britain were the party that exercised the New Right ideology whose "political goal is social stability and neo-liberals, who elevate the free market above all other social institutions" (Gray:1997:154).