POLITICS
Maclennan runs out of the nettles and into the bonfire
FERDINAND MOUNT
These things mark a man, the stings penetrate the stoutest Argyllshire leotards, and may in time drive him into politics, possibly even to become leader of the SDP. No doubt many of us, in an idle hour, have thought of becoming leader of the SDP. The limelight would be mildly agree- able, the responsibilities minimal, and the term of office blessedly brief. But to take on the job at this particular moment does suggest a certain taste for punishment, expecially since Mr Maclennan voted against the merger which he now has to pilot through.
Mr Maclennan is the son of one of Scotland's leading gynaecologists. And his demeanour — grave, somewhat ab- stracted, accompanied by a curious hand- washing gesture — does remind me of a gynae who has just come from the operat- ing theatre with discouraging news. Like many great doctors, he conveys his emi- nence by a kind of incoherence in explana- tion which hovers on the edge, and if pestered by questions decidedly over the edge, of ill-humour. In short, he is not the sort of chap Jeffrey Archer would cast as the man of destiny for a new up-and- coming party. His brother-in-law, Mr John McGrath, the romantic firebrand play- wright and founder of the 7:84 Theatre Group, would be much more the ticket.
The tenacity of a Scotch lawyer is never to be underestimated, and Mr Maclennan stressed in his leadership speech (which gave a new meaning to the epithet low- key') what a hard bargain he intends to drive with the Liberals. But David Steel has already destroyed the first two leaders of the SDP. What is there to prevent him completing the hat-trick by running rings round its last, caretaker, leader?
`In all my years in the Labour Party, I had never seen such a ruthless and savage deed', says Dr Owen in his new book, of David Steel's attempt to unseat Roy Jenk- ins as leader of the Alliance right in the middle of the 1983 general election cam- paign. The Doctor claims that his breath was taken away by Mr Steel's barefaced behaviour in summoning them all to Ettrick Bridge and then without warning insisting that the Jenkins question be open- ly discussed. Dr Owen does not, however, reflect upon his own conduct in hiving already allowed Mr Steel to talk to him about replacing Jenkins in favour of Owen. `I did say,' Dr Owen admits, 'that if, and it was a very big if, Roy was prepared to make a transfer, I would not block it.' The Corleone family would be proud of that usage of 'transfer'. No wonder Lord Jenk- ins has taken such simple pleasure in shoving Dr Owen deeper into the nettles these past few weeks.
Nor has Mrs Williams been behindhand. Years of jokes about her always being late, her untidy hair and her inability to make up her mind have left their mark too. She may continue to protest her amazement at how good-humoured Monday's merger de- bate was, but, if so, it was no thanks to her presidency. She had to be forcibly pre- vented from putting the boot into the Owenites at the beginning of the debate, and she and Roy Jenkins were almost alone in their indecent and premature eagerness to declare that apart from the three sitting MPs — Owen, Cartwright, and Rosie Barnes — there could be no question of any electoral pact with the anti-mergerites. 'Join us — or else' is scarcely 'civilised values' in action. I should explain that the whole point of merger is to `save civilised values'; according to ex- Labour MPs such as Bill Rodgers and Tom McNally. For wherever Lord Jenkins goes, he apparently carries these values with him, like some portable ark or tantalus.
Even the SDP's leaders did, I think, half-believe their own propaganda that they were intrinsically nicer than Labour or Tory politicians and so pretty well immune to the risks of strife and rancour inherent in all organised political activity, since their superior goodwill and tolerance would effortlessly overcome such risks. True, they were aware that some of their col- leagues, considered as individuals, were capable of the usual ratlike cunning, but somehow the mantle of social democracy would ennoble and purify their conduct.
Hence perhaps most of them failed to grasp fully just how mad it was to hold the merger ballot. Any normal party lead- ership would have thanked David Steel for his interesting suggestion and set up a leisurely joint working party to discuss options for closer relation between the two parties. Time was needed to spy out the land, to calculate the pros and cons and, above all, to recover their nerve after a disappointing but by no means disastrous election result. The whole business was characterised by a mixture of slackness, arrogance and impatience by mergerites and anti-mergerites alike.
Is it true, as Professor David Marquand argued, that if they get the right terms and the right structure, `who can honestly say that the new party would be fundamentally different from the party which we are in now'? Or is this the greatest parting since the Red Sea? Is there some great differ- ence of principle behind the split, a differ- ence which the terms of the merger are powerles to resolve and which does not boil down to Dr Owen's pique? And regardless of whether there is or is not 'an amicable separation', does Mr John Cart- wright's refusal 'to leap on the bandwagon as the well-oiled wheels begin to move' (believed to be yet another reference to Lord Jenkins) have some serious signifi- cance for British politics? In crude voting terms, after all, the matter can be boiled down to a couple of fairly simple proposi- tions: if the Labour Party turns permanent- ly sensible; then the third party will never take off properly; if the Left goes berserk, the third party, in alliance with a fourth party or alone, will take off anyway. Whether or not Dr Owen comes back to lead such a fourth party, having successful- ly retained both the SDP name and Mr David Sainsbury's munificence, may seem a relatively minor matter.
Here I am a bit of a sneaking Owenite. The Liberals are not so much soggy as bogged down in the 1960s. They seem incapable of responding to new conditions and aspirations. As Dr Owen is fond of pointing out, they would not budge in their hostility to council house sales until the Labour Party shifted. I doubt whether acquiring the blander notables of the SDP will do anything to cure this tendency. If the split does not amount to a tragedy, it is at least a pity.
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