The cultural commentator Robert Hewison wrote that New Society became "a forum for the new intelligentsia",[2] created by the expansion of higher education in Britain from the early 1960s.
These aims were continued and developed under the editorship of Paul Barker (1968–86), who was described by the labour historian Eric Hobsbawm as the "most original of editors".
[5] The historian E. P. Thompson wrote that "New Society's hospitality to a dissenting view" was "evidence that the closure of our democratic traditions is not yet complete".
By contrast with other London-based magazines of opinion, New Society's emphasis was strongly non-metropolitan, and it preferred to focus on "the Other Britain".
A special issue, "Non-Plan : an experiment in freedom," 20 March 1969, in which the design historian Reyner Banham, the urban geographer Peter Hall, the architect Cedric Price and Paul Barker argued jointly that much town and country planning was misguided and counter-productive and should be scrapped.