Alliance turmoil - you ain't seen nothing yet!
Socialist Outlook magazine1980sPhil HearseScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE CRISIS in the SDP over merger with the Liberals raises two basic questions. First, why has the division between the Owenites and the SDP pro-merger faction taken place, and are there any real policy differences? And second, will the impending split in the SDP lead simply to an enlarged Liberal Party plus an SDP rump — and hence a decline in the 'third force' in British politics?
The opposition to merger with the Liberals comes not from a fictitious 'grassroots uprising' as alleged by David Owen, but first and foremost from the opposition of a cabal of SDP leaders — David Owen's own coterie to be precise. Doubtless Owen's opposition to merger includes an element of self-aggrandisement and self-promotion, namely that the continued existence of an SDP rump is his sole hope of remaining a party 'leader'. But there are real differences in policy orientation, albeit of a secondary nature, and it is likely that the split in the SDP will exacerbate differences between the Owenites and the new party.
What are these differences? Owen is charting a rightist course which he fears will be incompatible with some of the more radical inclinations of Liberal rank and file activists. In fact this is nothing new; many Liberal rank and filers have been profoundly embarrassed by Owen's refusal to explicitly denounce the vastly expensive Trident nuclear submarine project, and his ambiguous but right wing phrases about the 'social market'.
Leading Owenite Sue Slipman gave the game away at the SDP assembly by talking about the task of 'humanising Thatcherism'. That very frank and revealing phrase caused something of a shock wave in the conference, but of course highlighted a conflict between Owen and Steel during the general election campaign — Owen had said that the Alliance would be prepared to do a coalition deal with Thatcher, while Steel said the opposite!
Of course, it would be premature to draw a 'left-right' line of divide down the split in the SDP; things are more complicated than that. A fused Liberal-SDP majority party will have some very right wing types in it, not least veterans of the far right inside the Labour Party, people who have always been pro-nuclear, pro-American and pro capitalist.
Bill Rogers, a bitter opponent of David Owen in the present dispute is a case in point. He was one of the main organisers of the 'campaign for democratic socialism' which campaigned against unilateralism in the Labour Party in the early 1960s. Both a new fused party and an 'old' SDP party would be capitalist parties, at first separated mainly by differences of tactics and personality, rather than major differences of ideology, let alone class allegiance.
Still, if Owen wants to carve out a distinct policy profile for the SDP rump, it is hardly likely, either from the point of view of his own instincts, or that of the political space, that he could move leftwards. Much more likely, Owen would seek to define a political profile somewhere in between Thatcherism and the Liberal-dominated 'new' party. There would be difficulties in carrying out this operation, because if people want a very hard-headed right-wing party which is pro-American and pro-nuclear, then why not simply support Thatcher and the Tories? Most likely, the Owen-led SDP rump will undergo a rapid political odyssy; how far right Owen will end up is anybody's guess. It is certainly not inevitable that Owen will always choose to oppose Thatcher from the left.
The future of the Owenite rump is a matter of speculation, however. What is certain is that in ruling class ideological circles there will be strong pressure not to allow the 'third force' in British politics to disappear. For the ruling class the Alliance serves a very precise and useful political function — it helps to ensure a split in the anti-Tory vote, thus keeping Labour out of power. It also maintains a constant right wing pressure on the Labour leadership. So long as the bourgeoisie regard Labour as an 'unsafe' governmental option — which it will unless or until the left is utterly crushed — they will want to keep their 'reserve team' in operation.
But the function of the Alliance as the permanent obstruction to a Labour majority is beginning to look a little rickety. In October 1974 the Liberals got 18 per cent of the vote, but Labour were still elected. In 1987 the Alliance got only 23 per cent of the vote, before the crisis in the SDP. Therefore, despite the bourgeoisie's wishes, the Alliance project is becoming destabilised through the SDP split. The real question is whether in view of the political infighting that will continue to happen, the new Liberal-SDP majority party will be able to maintain the vote in local and national elections, which the Alliance did previously. If it does not, if its vote goes down to that of the old Liberal Party and the Owenite rump comes to nothing, then we shall be in a position to say that, for the time being at least, the 'breaking the mould' period of British politics is over and we are back to what was simplistically called 'the two party system'. Of course, even if this does happen we will not be back to the 1950s and 1960s because the economic and social context is so different, and because as a consequence we have a very different Tory party, and as yet, a very different Labour party.
Whatever the exact outcome of the Alliance infighting in the months to come, one thing can be said with absolute certainty — for socialists it will be highly entertaining and welcome to see these very nice men and women tear each other to shreds. You thought left wing faction fighting was vicious — well you ain't seen nothing yet!
PHIL HEARSE