Stuart Hall d February 10th 2014, New Left Review Editor, theorist of Thatcher’s ‘Great Moving Right Show’
The Marxist writer and theorist Stuart Hall died eleven years ago today aged 82.
I was intrigued by a picture of Stuart Hall (above) the first Editor of New Left Review carrying the journal’s banner on what I suspect was the 1961 CND march. I wasn’t aware NLR ever had a banner but as the convenor of the London Socialist Historians Group, which does have a banner which hasn’t been on a demo for some years I recognise a sort of political and historical process at work. Any further pictures of the banner viewed with interest…
I’ve had a look through the issues of New Left Review for 1960 and 1961 when Stuart Hall was Editor (He resigned in December 1961). There is nothing specifically about the banner! Nor of course is there anything particularly not known to historians of the new left.
In this period, 65 years ago now, NLR was of course a theoretical journal as it remains, but it was also a network of activists, what is known as the first or Old New Left. There was NLR Clubs around the country-up to 50 at one point. There was also a serious orientation on CND, in its first mass movement phase and the Labour Party- a daily newsletter was produced for Labour Conferences.
There are occasional notes from the Editorial Board and the one marking Stuart Hall’s departure as Editor, also underlined that he had been very active in building the new left, speaking at up to six meetings a week. That probably explains why he is pictured with the NLR banner but details of how often it appeared and where remain to be discovered.
Hall wrote a memoir of his time as Editor of NLR- the first 12 issues (NLR 2/61 2010) where he underlines the orientation on the new layers of people coming into activity with CND which very much fitted the first New Left perspective of being non-aligned with either social democracy or Stalinism
Leave a Reply