The tensions in the British New Right on education revisited

Current accounts of the British New Right in education during the 1980s generally begin with an observation of the tensions between its neoliberal and neoconservative wings. The subsequent task becomes to explain how they could be reconciled in bringing about the fiercest reform of education in history. This article reverses the interpretive strategy. It first notes that neoliberalism and neoconservatism had hardly been distinguishable in the Black Papers published a decade earlier. Focusing on the doctrines concerning the precondition of marketising education and the meaning of parental choice, it then shows their persistent compatibility to be more an intellectual legacy inherited from the late 1960s and 1970s than a product of practical compromise under Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Therefore, what needs further exploration is instead where, how and why neoliberalism and neoconservatism did eventually diverge. This is clarified by reference to the issue of educational authority.