In one sense, of course, all of Stuart Hall's writing was political, but this collection focuses on the essays he wrote throughout his life that directly engaged with the political issues of the day. From the beginning, his analyses focused strongly on the central role of culture in politics, and his insights are evident across the whole selection, whether he is writing about Thatcher's authoritarianism or the double shuffles of Tony Blair. These essays come from three broad periods: the 1950s and 1960s, when Hall was involved in the New Left; the 1970s and 1980s, when he evolved his critique of Thatcherism; and from the 1990s until the end of his life, when he focused on the emergence of neoliberalism. The editors have brought together the best and most representative works of a writer with a unique and conjunctural approach to understanding politics, and have collected those works that have a general application to broader political questions. The collection is therefore valuable for readers interested in the politics of the past sixty years, in specific political questions, such as around political commitment, or the politics of empire, and specific political moments, such as the Cuban Crisis, or the actions of New Labour. But Hall's engaging writing and the connections here between his more obviously political writing and the other areas of his work-including identity politics and race-also make the collection an essential resource for those interested in politics more generally.

Selected Political Writings gathers Stuart Hall's best-known and most important essays that directly engage with political issues. Written between 1957 and 2011 and appearing in publications such as New Left Review and Marxism Today, these twenty essays span the whole of Hall's career, from his early involvement with the New Left, to his critique of Thatcherism, to his later focus on neoliberalism. Whether addressing economic decline and class struggle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the politics of empire, Hall's singular commentary and theorizations make this volume essential for anyone interested in the politics of the last sixty years.

Issue 54 Summer 2013Buy this issue Hope and experience As well as publishing two more instalments of the Soundings manifesto - Doreen Massey on vocabularies of the economy and Michael Rustin on a relational society - this issue includes articles that engage with and extend its arguments in a number of different directions. Tom Crompton writes from the perspective of long involvement in the environmental movement and discusses how values are articulated in political discourse. Richard Johnson finds sources for hope in Gramsci's work, while Nick Stevenson shows how the arguments in The Long Revolution remain relevant. Kevin Morgan argues that the 1945 Labour government's achievements need to be understood historically as the product of many years discussion and struggle during the interwar period - something that needs to be taken on board by those of us seeking to recreate such a breakthrough. Paolo Gerbaudo discusses the role of young people and horizontal movements in the crisis in Egypt. He is critical of the opposition's welcoming of the army coup and argues that this shows some of the limitations of horizontalism. Anna Coote and Jacob Mohun Himmelweit argue that the distribution of time should become part of political debate, and that we should be putting forward a norm of working thirty hours a week. Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller document the enormous environmental and social damage caused by the growth of the digital economy, and argue that this receives much less attention than might be expected because of our wider technophilia, and the continuing lure of i-gadgetry. Sophie Mayer discusses the movement of international solidarity with Pussy Riot, including the special role of poetry within the campaign. And we also restart our poetry pages in this issue, commissioned by our new poetry editor, Alison Winch. We begin with a selection of three poems from Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos. As Sophie writes: 'The poem and the song are the perfect vehicle for protest - small enough to smuggle by hand, learn by heart or send in a tweet, large enough for the whole world to join in.'

Selected Political Writings gathers Stuart Hall's best-known and most important essays that directly engage with political issues. Written between 1957 and 2011 and appearing in publications such as New Left Review and Marxism Today, these twenty essays span the whole of Hall's career, from his early involvement with the New Left, to his critique of Thatcherism, to his later focus on neoliberalism. Whether addressing economic decline and class struggle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the politics of empire, Hall's singular commentary and theorizations make this volume essential for anyone interested in the politics of the last sixty years.

The neoliberal revolution, which began in the 1970s, was an extremely successful attempt to roll back the gains of the post-war welfare state and of liberation movements, and to restore the dominance of business interests across the world. In recent years, many Soundings articles have sought to interpret these developments through conjunctural analysis. This collection brings some of this work together, to explore what is at stake in our current and recent political battles and call into question the foundational assumptions of the neoliberal order. With contributions from Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin - the founding editors of Soundings - John Clarke, and an introduction by Sally Davison and Jonathan Rutherford, this volume represents a key moment in Soundings' analysis of neoliberalism. Throughout the collection, authors examine issues on which the whole of the left needs to focus, including political parties, activists, social movements, the trade unions and other civil society movements. Hegemonies, including the current neoliberal hegemony, can be disrupted at moments of crisis. Analyses of such moments, such as those in this Soundings collection, develop our understanding of how to politically intervene and how to formulate an alternative to neoliberal hegemonies.