Culture Wars : The Media and the British Left

A study of how the media actively intervene in new social movements and issues of representation.

Culture Wars charts the battle between two generations, one shaped by the immediate post-war period and the other by the cultural revolt of the 1960s. It was a clash that first exploded into life in the 1980s, when the Conservative press and government ridiculed radical young councillors as the ''loony left'', and turned them into the pariahs of contemporary politics. This cultural victory proved short lived. The values and political agenda of the urban left made significant advances in the 1990s and 2000s when the sixties generation moved into positions of power.
The book offers key insights for different disciplines: for media studies, it offers a compelling account of how the media represent, and influence, social change; for cultural studies, it illuminates the way in which the culture of society is a battleground between generations and opposed value groups; for the social sciences, it documents how the rise of women, immigration, gay liberation and concern about the environment were mediated, and became the subjects of debate, political conflict, and regulation; and for the general reader, it offers a very readable account of the entry of 1960s values into mainstream politics, and the culture wars that have been fought ever since.