Abstract

Within the framework of utilising the theme of foreign policy and international relations as a prism by means of which to read British intellectual discourse, this article will analyse the intellectual debate - understood here in the sense of cultural actors engaged in public and/or political debates developed in journals or newspapers - on the British international position during the 1980s. On the one hand, it addresses how the long-standing themes of decline and unilateralism had been revived and developed facing the challenges posed by the «second Cold War». On the other, it focuses on the discourse raised by Leftist intellectuals. Here the emphasis is on the journal «Marxism Today» and themes like the nature of Thatcherism and the Falklands factor, and their impact on the renewal of the Left. By concentrating on the link between foreign policy and intellectual discourse the article illustrates how the new generation of British intellectuals was able to redefine its public role within a new national discourse.