Political commentary
Dr Owen's model
Charles Moore
Salford In his 'keynote' speech to the Social 1. Democrats on Monday Dr David Owen invited them to 'look to the future'. Said like that, it did not seem an interesting or unusual request. It was not until the even- ing that I remembered that Dr Owen was the author of a book called Face the Future, and so his call acquires a new meaning. He was making the politician's traditional bid for the copyright on a cliche. Just as people say, 'It's a matter of what Rab Buter called "the two-way passage of ideas" ' or 'the "pound in your pocket" of which Harold Wilson used to speak,' he wants them to `Ah, that's a question of what David Owen would call "facing the future".' Most of us might not like to be associated in people's minds with a banality. But politicians are desperate to be familiar figures, and since few of them can aspire to a famous connection with an original thought, a corny one will do. Unlike his rivals in the other parties, David Owen has to do all this alone. With Roy Jenkins superannuated and Shirley Williams out of Parliament (neither of which facts does he
regret), he is the SDP as far as the popular view of it goes. He has to spend the next five years making himself into a public character and a political movement.
The keynote speech was therefore a work of self-publicity. Dr Owen praised his own wit at the hustings — 'the politics of the abattoir', 'the Queen Bee' — and emphasis- ed yet again his distinguished Falklands war record when he 'matched the mood of the British people'. He hinted that he might be a second Lloyd George. He reminded us of his fight, when Foreign Secretary, to in- crease overseas aid. And he ended by speak- ing not of his party, but of how he himself 'in opposition and in government' intended to give it to us straight. As a popular political myth the thing lacks weight; but Dr Owen does have the advantage of being still young. He is not irrevocably associated with some previous disaster. He has the time to invent himself.
Casting around for a model on which to build himself, Dr Owen scarcely bothers to conceal that he has chosen Mrs Thatcher. 'Merit she has,' he said, 'and conviction in abundance.' He implied admiration for her toughness — shown in questions of defence, the economy and trade unions — and for her capacity to play the patriotic card. He tried to trump her by repeating his call for dual key control of cruise missiles, but immediately added a passage leaving the way open for supporting their installa-
tion even without the key. He scarcely made any of those calls for self-immolation in the cause of 'the European idea', traditional where two or three Alliance supporters are gathered together. How he must long for the day when 'Owenisrif has replaced `Thatcherism' as a politico-ideological phenomenon about which whole theses are composed.
In terms of policy, which the Doctor, in an interview in the latest New Democrat, mistakenly calls 'the essence of politics', he is pinching most of it from her, too. The market economy is now a Good Thing. There should be more competition and enterprise, and less regulation. Incomes policy won't work. There is very little dif- ference to show between the two on defence. Rather desperately, he sticks in some anti-Thatcher elements here and there. Proportional representation, of course, and an entirely fanciful notion about the EEC and the 'London-Dublin axis' providing a political initiative in Nor- thern Ireland; but mainly it is the
'tenderness' which balances the 'toughness'. This means saying that you are in favour of the National Health Service and that you regret the death of old people from hypothermia — both statements with which even Mrs Thatcher usually agrees. The actual programme for tenderness is a bit thin. It involves higher capital taxes, but with the admission that they do not raise very much money. It includes work- sharing, which Dr Owen advocated thus: 1. . it does increase employment, at least in the short term, providing that it is also associated with increased production or lower labour costs. Because these condi- tions are hard to sustain, the danger is that reduced working time might result in higher inflation, less competitiveness and more unemployment • • Potentially work- sharing could ... make a sizeable impact on unemployment but it needs the right climate, democratic unions, participative management and a sensible balance of sub- sidies and incentives.'
I make that almost one thousand qualifications. Every time David Owen en- thuses about bombs and the free market he carries conviction. Every time he talks of welfarism and public services he sounds bored.
The SDP may not be the ideal party for all this, and Salford is certainly not the ideal place. The television cameras have not real- ly made clear how very very small the whole show is. Even the Liberals manage a scaled down version of the conferences of the big
parties. The SDP produces what amounts to a seminar, encouraged by the surroundings — the nondescript lecture hall of a nondescript university. Men with beards from the floor, and men with spectacles from the platform, make well received speeches for and against devolution, for and against local income tax. The bar would be crowded with refugees from the chamber if it wasn't situated six floors up another building. Some brighter sparks are learning to manipulate standing orders, and a few are pursuing the favourite Liberal and Labour pastime of accusing the 'partY establishment' of treachery, but
generally all is cloying sweetness and glaring light.
With the prospect of office and elections so remote, Dr Owen claims that he does not mind the semi-academic atmosphere. Now is a good time, he thinks, to sort out policy,. With all that talk about merging with the Liberals put on one side for the moment, the party is supposed to be developing its identity. The difficulty is that these con- crete blocks of Academe are inimical to the start of the David Owen personality cult. Either seminars or sex appeal, not both• ft was the attempt to mix them which produc- ed the uneasiness in the Doctor's oratory. To his party, he was conversationally set- ting out some things to think about. To the voters, he was putting on a big act. The standing ovation therefore looked III- congruous, but if it had not happened there would have been consternation. As the unassailable leader of a small and deferen- tial party, Dr Owen must feel both that his statements are delivered in vacuo, and yet that the eyes of the nation are upon all Of them. There is no way of getting the tone right. The prospects for his party are simila.rlY ambiguous. Since no one likes left-wing policies or trade unions, it would seem sen- sible that the SDP take the place of Labour as the opposition. Seen from a tipster point of view, it also looks a good bet. And yet can anyone quite believe that a partY with six MPs, even consorting with another one with 17, has got it in it? At one point on Monday, Dr Owen complained of . rV.Irs Thatcher's callousness in not permittnig 'the representation of three and half million SDP voters at the Cenotaph Ceremony His juxtaposition of the SDP and the war dead did not have the desired effect. There is no obvious connection between the two. 1 found myself wondering whether we wanted yet another politician waving his wreath in front of the television cameras. Surely people who vote for a political partY do not expect 'representation' at the Cenotaph anyway. It made me think what trivial enterprise the Social Democrats are, when I do not really want to think that' They are still failing to produce the excite- ment essential to politics. Dr Owen is trying hard; but the humililating truth is that even if he were Pericles, he could not do as much for his party at this moment as could one Conservative backbencher just by falling under a bus.
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