Election view (2)
A watershed election
Robert Harvey The circumstances surrounding the 1974 election break all modern precedent. I feel it triaY foreshadow a fundamental political realignment of a kind not seen in Britain since the Liberal decline began in 1918. Politicians of all parties are lamenting the divisive climate in which the election is to be fought. Yet on the face of it there seems little the rnatter with asking the electorate to make its Choice on a real issue. For years electoral disillusion has been increasing with the alternatives offered by the two major parties. The consensus politics of the last twenty years May have been inevitable but were hardly calculated to inspire faith in our democratic sYstem, particularly among younger voters. The 1974 election may yet have a tonic effect upon it all. For at stake is a real issue, th.e first since Suez, and the first election slnce 1945 in which the parties have adopted significantly different positions. Mr Wilson of ,crourse has an interest in confusing the issue bY linking it with the Government's overall ?erformance. But that in a sense must now become irrelevant. The parties are presenting the electorate with two distinct attitudes on the major problem facing this country at the. moment and the voters must choose. The Choice is as stark as Mr Heath made it in his television broadcast at the outset of the carnPaign. Few can doubt that if the Conservatives were returned to office they would refuse to settle with the miners outside their ?WTI incomes policy framework of fair wages and relativities. Few can doubt that, if Labour Won, a settlement would follow instantly and country return to the jungle of collective _u▪ argaining it so briefly escaped. Mr Powell, of c9urse, would welcome this as an expression ▪ market forces, ignoring the fact that union action is itself an interference with the market that compels Government action. Mr Powell's Market place is one where wages are deter'fled by the availability of labour. Mr .'°.rrnleY'S is one in which they are deterled by the strength of a union at a strategic Position in the country's economy. The two ai re Poles apart, but it is Mr Gormley's which 11 at present operating and against that the rr,!nie Minister has been forced to act. H Me or chaos" is the Gaullist theme .of Mr r,eath's election campaign, and unlike de t'-'aulle's at the end, to me it rings true. A anour government in office would not
necessarily unleash rampant inflation; Weimar historians need not reach for their pens just yet. As Mr Powell never tires of telling us the Government can only do that by printing too much money. A Labour government might pay off the miners but would have to cut down on public spending or raise taxes to contain inflation. Private industry would pass the wage increases along to the consumer. In the absence of economic growth — an almost certain prospect in the immediate future — the effect would always be the same: a steady lowering of the standard of living of the many — members of weaker unisms, the non-union working force, those on fixed incomes — for the benefit of the few.
The Conservatives then, if they lose, need only sit tight and, like Churchill, wait for events to prove them right. But the cost to the nation would be appalling. Their future, even in opposition, would inevitably be bound up with Mr Heath's. Mr Gormley made a singular job of uniting the Cabinet by his refusal to meet Mr Whitelaw last week, and gave the Prime Minister the unanimity he lacked four weeks ago. The immediate difficulties in which a Labour government would undoubtedly find itself will only serve to strengthen Mr Heath's hold over his party.
: The same cannot be said for Mr Wilson. His position in the Labour Party is precarious at the best of times, and this must surely be his last throw. If Labour loses, the moderates may draw the lesson that the electorate will shun them for as long as the party is crippled by its extremist limb, and may conclude that amputation, however protracted and painful, is in the last resort the precondition of a return to office.
Of course nothing of the sort may happen; Mr Wilson's resignation may be followed by the usual leadership struggle between right and left, with the traditional boneless wonder like Mr Callaghan stepping in at the end to take all the prizes. Principle once more will be sacrificed for the sake of unity and the patched-up face of British socialism presented yet again to the nation. That would be tragic because most of the blame for the deeper malaise of British politics can be directly ascribed to the state of the Labour Party. In its present form it is a contradiction. It achieved most of its aims between 1945 and 1950, and has failed ever since to find a role. The alliance between the two wings was forged by the common goals implemented by the Attlee administration, but has come unstuck on every major social issue since. The party encapsulates two very different views of society wholly at odds with each other. Welfare-state liberalism (loosely described as Social Democracy) and Marxist ideals are for the most part irreconcilable, and the Labour Party has inevitably to fall back on two formulae to preserve its precarious unity. The first is simply a form of sentimental idealism: the familiar doctrines of nationalisation, redistribution of wealth and social reform are wheeled out between elections and accepted by the right in the secure knowledge that there exists no chance of their implementation by a Labour government in power.
The second formula is that of pure unconstructive opposition to the Conservative Party. Nothing unites Labour ranks so much as attacking their opponents because that in effect is the only function left to them. But it is not an inspiring position, leaving an unpleasant aftertaste of unfulfilled expectations among an electorate which supposed Labour had something better to offer.
The electorate was once asked to decide between an ideological progressive Party and one which sought to temper progress to the British way of life, and generally chose the latter. It has now been increasingly faced with a bewildering choice between parties without ideologies, whose sole bones of contention are the blind attacks of one upon the other for pursuing policies they both believe in. Small wonder that voters expressed their protest whenever they could, deserting the major parties in droves at by-elections or ceasing to vote at all. Small wonder that many young voters find themselves alienated from a political process bereft of idealism.
The 1974 election may change all this. It is an extraordinary contortion for Labour and indeed union leaders to defend the miners' strike in terms of their new-found economic importance; it is also extraordinarily shortsighted. By the same token, when Britain reaps the promised harvest of North Sea oil, the Government can cock a snook at the miners and depress their wages once more. Which may be the logical end of a Powellite argument, but is certainly not what the miners will be arguing then.
The Labour Party could have led the argument for fair wages, and represented Mr Heath's change of direction half way through his term as a major victory for their ideals. But they opposed for the sake of opposition and the election has caught them committed to a prescription for industrial anarchy. The electorate has at last been presented with a valid choice between a party led into a false and potentially disastrous position by its own internal contradictions, and a party acting in the interests of the country; this was surely a part of Mr Heath's calculation. Labour's only hope is to obscure the central issue sufficiently to let them off the hook. The Prime Minister could be accused of an unfair electoral gambit if it were not for the importance of that issue. The election is a referendum between power unionism and a fair wages policy, which is the major problem facing this country today. It will test whether the British people have the stomach for the hard fight ahead; and if the bankruptcy of Labour's position is exposed in the process so much the better. A partisan realignment may ensue • which will do much to reinvigorate the depressed state of British democracy. 1974 in my view could well prove a watershed elec• tion and restore the health of the body politic. At least the people for once have something to choose between.
Robert Harvey, who is twenty, is reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Christ Church and is Chairman of the Oxford University Bow Group
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