New Right

   The label applied in many countries to conservative groups from the late 1970s onwards who advocated a set of neo-liberal ideas. The ideas inspired the development of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in the United States where the New Right developed a political approach and electoral apparatus that carried Reagan into the White House.

   In New Right thinking, the free market is seen as the cornerstone of economic and political freedom. Though most notably articulated in the writings of Friedrich Hayek and the American economist Milton Friedman, New Right theory can be traced back to the days of the late-eighteenth-century political economist Adam Smith and his supporters in the following century. Use of the term New Right distinguished conservative proponents from their post-1945 predecessors in Britain and America who were more concerned with pursuing moderate policies and seeking broad agreement or consensus on social and economic goals.