A world falls apart
Austin Mitchell
Great party splits were never like this. One imagines an incremental process, personality clash piled on policy row, petty motive on noble, a progressive build up to eventual break on a major issue. Today's reality is different, a split waiting for an excuse to happen. Expecting discussion and persuasion, plea and counter plea, one gets silence as if it was all over. Like the householder in the double glazing advertisements, I sit insulated from the raging battle, keeping contact only through news bulletins of the dead and dying, or television interviews of simpering blandness on one side, sullen resentment on the other. Personal contacts produce delphic utterances, not enlightenment. . . A world is falling apart. Yet most of us can neither do anything nor understand why. Up and down the country, Labour Party members are puzzling why it is that we hate each other more than we hate HER.
Perhaps it is because so many motives are being bundled into the same media package. Although the new Centre Party will be the first party to start from the Cabinet and, build downwards, it is really a broad sect. The Jenkins clique left the Labour Party emotionally a decade ago. Engaged on Roy's revenge, they are now prodding others over the top. Some voted for Foot to cause a split, then used his election to justify one. The middle-class intellectuals learned to do without deference in today's grubby party, but they cannot understand hatred. Then there are the Euro-fanatics and those who have just had enough of Benn or the unions. All these groups are now hanging round, waiting for reasons to justify a decision which has already taken itself.
They know not what they do. It will end in disaster, for them and for us. The media, Peter Jenkins, and those who would start the world anew portray what is happening as the start of a major political re alignment. The mould will be broken, shattered, changed. Such is the promise. Reality will be different.
Our political system is already unstable, more so than that Fourth French Republic we used to patronise. In France they only changed governments; we change economic policies, incomes policies, industrial poli cies, educational policies, as well. Far from needing change, we have too much of it. Instead of liberating anything, the 'breakthrough to the centre' will harden and rigidify both major parties in their least pleasant, least attractive postures. The new party will relegate itself, and all the ability and idealism it has attracted, to a media genic limbo — such is the lot of third, fourth and fifth parties in an electoral system they abhor but cannot change. The enthusiasm is attractive. As in 1914 they will march off with bands and streamers, but end up sinking in mud and blood, littering the middle ground with the debris of recrimination, bitterness and reputations assassin ated, and rendering it uninhabitable for the major parties who would have moved there eventually. The era of instability will be followed by that of impotence.
Mrs Thatcher has changed the face of British politics. She has turned economics into a branch of morality, convinced that since people had been living beyond their means for 20 years it was legitimate to contract the means to show them the error of their ways. The consensus of 30 years has been shattered, extremism strengthened.
With industrial disaster becoming the central issue of politics, both parties are being pushed in new, more divergent directions for their answers. Politics will become more bitter and divided, but this will not streng then Labour. Fear breeds caution. Labour, which loses support in opposition, when it presents its worst face to the world, but holds it in power when it is clothed in purpose and respectability, will suffer more than ever from this disadvantage.
'There is no alternative' is Margaret's mantra. There are several, but Labour's problem is that it cannot agree on any particular set. The economy must be regenerated, but the two insulating techniques available — import management or devaluation — pose huge problems of ideology, as well as choice. Industry must be rebuilt, but that brings up the ideological question of cooperation or control. Inflation is a danger, but incomes policies are divisive and the unions will not consider them. Burdens must be shed for survival, but should they include defence? The Common Market intrudes everywhere, precluding many of the solutions the Left wants, imposing burdens the Right fears. The main bond of unity among the Social Democrats is their objection to Labour's commitment to leave Europe. They can only say so sotto voce because of the unpopularity of the EEC, but they still prefer the albatross to the party round whose neck they hung it in the first place.
Desertion from the Labour Party strengthens everything the leavers oppose, from union domination to mindless sloganising. It makes the Labour Party less attractive, relegates it to dependence on its dwindling hard core of support, and makes it harder for it to win power. Though the opinion polls indicate that a new political grouping will draw substantial support from disgrunfied Conservatives, its main impact will be on Labour seats, some lost immediately and others lost later as MPs who fail the re-selection test become convinced of the virtues of the new party. Labour will find it very difficult to win the majority of these 20 or 30 seats back, but elsewhere the electoral system will prevent the new party — and the Liberals, who are sure to be resurgent shortly — from winning any respectable number of others. Break-through is inordinately difficult, so their main political achievement will be negative: keeping Labour out. Indeed, in their hubris, this is one of the goals that many of them desire. They intend to teach Labour a lesson. Sadly, there is no chance of it learning it. Many on the right of the Labour Party share this view that an election defeat, possible two, may be necessary to rescue their party for sense. It is difficult to see how.
• Opinion polls show that Tory policies, because vaguer and more in line with widespread prejudices and platitudes, are more acceptable and popular than Labour's. There is already a gulf between Labour's people and its policies, and the more Labour makes itself acceptable to its own activists, the more it steps out of line with its voters. New, and apparently strange policies must widen this gulf. The press will exacerbate the problem. Britain's popular press is dangerous not because it is so bad (though it is), but because it is so good at populism. It absorbs popular attitudes and prejudices, amplifies them and relays them back. If even Jim Callaghan's moderate party was successfully portrayed as a set of dangerous revolutionaries, it is difficult to imagine the picture which will now emerge. The thought of opting out of our troubles and torments and starting anew must .be attractive to many Labour MPs. PeTSUaSIOS and argument have given way to sloganising and a dialogue of the deaf. Decisions are taken by processes which once gave ballast to the party but which are now merely cumbersome and unpredictable. The Parliamentary Party is demoralised. Yet there is no salvation outside. No reformer can cut himself off from the forces and the machine he will need if anything at all is to be achieved in this hidebound society. Anyone Who claims to exercise power for the multitude who labour must be able to work With them and their organisations at some stage. So in the end the walk-out which looks so attractive will merely spread our impasse to the whole political system. Labour would be relegated to perpetual Opposition. Where the polls now threaten to consign Mrs Thatcher to the hatbox of history, 'realignment', within an electoral System whicl) does not permit it and cannot be changed, will merely entrench her in Office, blooded, slightly bowed and totally bemused by an economic crisis she has created but cannot reverse.
Far from being on the verge of an exciting new era, we are drifting into a decade of deadlock with a frustrated opposition incapable of defeating a government which is going through an ideological menopause, While high hopes and noble aspirations are marched into a cul-de-sac. Without electoral reform, change has no future. Without change, electoral reform is impossible. So Just at the time when North Sea oil gives Britain its first real prospect of recovery, Political deadlock will prevent us from sizing its opportunity and condemn us to bItter decline. There can be no gloomier Prospect, and nothing further from Social bemocracy.
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