Some very important changes in socialist ideas are now beginning to come through in Europe. Yet at the surface of politics they are invisible in Britain, even though there are those here who have contributed to them. Where they have become visible at the surface, as most notably in the rise of the Green Party in the German Federal Republic, they are still commonly interpreted as a local 'ecological' variation, without long-term effect on the main body of socialist institutions and ideas. Similarly, the difficult argument about relations between the Left and the popular campaigns for nuclear disarmament - description of these as the Peace Movement raises the precise point - is often displaced to the idea of a 'single issue', which leaves the main body of politics intact.

LRB 3 February 1983 | PDF Download