Editing New Left Review (section)

=== Background ===
As part of the emerging British "[[New Left]]" in the late 1950s, a number of journals were launched to carry commentary on matters of [[Marxist]] theory. One of these was ''The Reasoner'', founded by historians [[E. P. Thompson]] and [[John Saville]] in July 1956.<ref name=Birchall>{{cite web |url=http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/birchall/1980/xx/nlr.html |author=Ian Birchall|title=The autonomy of theory—A short history of ''New Left Review'' (Autumn 1980) |publisher=Marxists.org |access-date=29 June 2014}}</ref> Three quarterly issues were produced.<ref name=Birchall /> The publication was expanded and further developed from 1957 to 1959 as ''[[The New Reasoner]]'', with an additional ten issues produced.<ref name=Birchall /> ''The New Reasoner'' distanced itself from the [[Communist Party of Great Britain|British Communist Party]] and [[USSR]] in the wake of [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s February 1956 "[[Secret Speech]]" on the [[Joseph Stalin's cult of personality|Stalinist cult of personality]], and the Soviet repression of the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Hungarian Uprising]] in November 1956.<ref name=Birchall />

Another radical journal of the period was the ''[[Universities and Left Review]]'', a publication started in 1957 with less allegiance to the British communist tradition.<ref name=Birchall /> This journal was youth-oriented and [[pacifism|pacifist]] in nature, expressing opposition to the militaristic rhetoric of the [[Cold War]], voicing strong disagreement with the 1956 [[Suez War]], and supporting the burgeoning [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] (CND).<ref name=Birchall />