Although SocSoc harboured a vast array of members representing all shades of left-wing opinion, it is notable that many of SocSoc's members, and some of its methods, were influenced by the New Left. Bob Heath was in his own words "product of the New Left", and had indeed been asked to become editor of the Universities and Left Review, a mouthpiece for the New Left, in 1956. In the late-1950s, Harry Barnes had himself been inspired to join the Labour Party by the teachings of left-wing intellectual G.D.H. Cole, who had also inspired Stuart Hall and other New Left undergraduates in Oxford in the mid-1950s. It is also notable that the New Left's critique of both Western and Soviet foreign policy, and its calls for an independent British foreign policy, had much traction amongst SocSoc members. The Society also operated a decentralised, facilitative structure instead of a top-down, insular executive - something of a key ideal of the New Left, and especially of the student movements that followed in the late-1950s.