Political commentary
From May to September
George Gale
Already as this week ends the general councillors of the Trades Union Con- gress are deliberating to determine their col- lective line for the TUC conference which opens at Blackpool on Monday. The poli- tical year may thus be said to have begun, more especially since the line likely to cause the TUC most difficulty is the one they should take with Mr Tebbit and the Tory Government.
The formal opening of the new political season, which may well also be the 'first season proper of the new politics, will thus be on Monday morning, when this year's chairman of the TUC arrives at his presidential seat by virtue of Buggins's turn — and what a providential arrival Buggins has produced for us all this year! He is Mr Frank Chapple, leader of the electricians' and plumbers' union. Chapple is very much on the right of the TUC and is also one of the few members of the TUC General Council capable of grasping and talking common-sense. He is not averse to calling a spade a bloody shovel either. If he speaks his mind on Monday, and tells the TUC and the Labour movement what he thinks about them, the political season will be off to a very good start indeed.
It promises to be great fun. Immediately after the TUC the Social Democrats meet at Salford, where they will be occupying the university. They will debate out loud, if not clear, their political strategy. The Gang of Four has been transmogrified since they met last year to a Gang of One, Two, Three and Four. Dr David Owen is now the Leader, the undisputed Number One. Mr Roy Jenkins has settled back effortlessly in- to the role of elder statesman which we now can see clearly his entire political career has been preparing him for. Mrs Shirley Williams has tucked her handbag under her arm and bustled off stage to bumble around in the world outside the closed and smoke.: filled rooms of politics, seeking airy spaces for her airy talents to diffuse themselves. As for poor Mr Bill Rodgers: whatever has become of him?
They will all be at Salford: all that glittering and dewy-eyed crowd who a mere two years ago sang on the SDP train from Perth to Bradford in their first dawn, who piled up the votes at the general election, who may yet be seen to have broken the mould, but who have not so far managed to put it together again for their own advan- tage. At the last election they achieved a political prodigy: they raised their votes from nil to 7,776,065 (helped by the Liberals) while reducing their parliamentary representation from 29 to six. In Gallup's most recent poll they with their Liberal allies have jumped over the back of the Labour Party. If Dr Owen can steady his party and sustain his own political momen- tum, then rich political rewards lie ahead, and those who have already jumped on the bandwagon will not have jumped in vain. It is a very good bet for anyone who wants to take a chance on political preferment. For the time being, it is Dr Owen's one man bandwagon, a most excellent each-way vehicle to clihlb onto.
This cannot be said of the Liberal Party, the other half of the Alliance, and looking these days very much like the back half of a pantomime horse. The general election may have finished the Labour Party off by ex- cluding it from power; by offering up the prospect of power, it could easily ruin the Liberals. The once great party is now shying away from the practicalities of power like a coquette suddenly confronted with a de- mand for bed.
It would normally be possible to sym- pathise with Mr David Steel, but his own behaviour ever since he went down with post-influenzal asthenia or whatever has been astonishingly clumsy. He retains his public popularity; but he is in great danger of losing his command Over his troops. He will journey to Harrogate to meet his fellow Liberals at the end of September, either to regain or to relinquish his authority. It will have been a long long time from May to September if September in Harrogate is his swansong. It may well depend upon whether or not the Liberal Party as it has become during the days of Clement Davies, Grimond, Thorpe and Steel himself shows itself in its true colours or whether it can still bear to wear the clothes it put on for the benefit of the Alliance and the election. The true party revels in irresponsibility and likes winning by-elections. The party Steel would have it become would wear hair shirts and provide the poor bloody infantry for Owen's SDP and a general election vic- tory for the Alliance. Such a Liberal party. would have to be ready not to frighten the electorate. We will see at Harrogate whether they are ready to learn.
Labour is at Brighton: a pity, for when the Labour Party is in turmoil and filled with internecine fury, as it is now, it is far more satisfactory for it to meet at Black- pool, where the incomparable Winter Gardens offer a theatie perfectly suited to Labour's histrionics. The party may be tak- ing an unconscionable time a-dying, but dy- ing it still looks to be doing, with the greatest application and determination. The trade union leaders who are seeing to it that
Mr Neil Kinnock becomes the new leader, thinking it prudent to jump a generation or so, are putting in a tyro who will be prematurely bald before the next election and who will not even have young looks to explain his inexperience. It will be intrigu- ing to see whether Mr Hattersley or Mr Meacher becomes his deputy: if the former, we will have a kind of Judy and Punch act with mayhem all round, if the latter, mating like that of praying mantises, where the female eats up the male once his work is done (Mr Meacher, needless to say, cast 01 the female role). Whatever happens, the, Labour Party may confidently be expected to conclude its conference having resolved that it wasn't its policies which lost it the election but the way that it said them. The Tories, up in Blackpool, should be pleased with themselves, but are unlikely t° be. There will be much pleasure and praise about the election. Mrs Thatcher will get her.due ovations. But governments embark- ing upon second administrations neither get nor deserve honeymoons. Among friends and supporters of Mrs Thatcher there is growing unease that she may not, after all, have the stuffing to force Thatcherisril upon the country. This unease is only a vague suspicion, a feeling intuited far more than a conclusion being reached; it may be due to nothing more than the clumsy weeks which followed the election victory and which ended with the bungled business of her eye injury. What was wanted and what is still wanted is the smack of firm govern' ment. The Prime Minister cannot, after all, be said to have succeeded in her first team A unique combination of political cir- cumstances, very fortunately for all of us, has given her a second term and a second chance. If she does not succeed in convino' ing the Conservative Party next month that she is ready to seize that chance she will certainly not convince the country.
Our electoral system will inevitably produce a new alignment of the Left, and the con- ferences may advance the process by which Dr Owen and the Social Democrats become the successors of Labour and the chief beneficiaries of the change brought about by Labour's historic revulsion from power and shift to the left. The Liberals will hove to choose between growing up and tagging along with the SDP on the one hand, and trailing hopelessly behind them and goo' boiling with Labour on the other. Whether Owen and the SDP come sooner or later t° power is less in their hands than in Mrs Thatcher's. She remains central. If she als° remains firm and resolute — if the centre holds — then things, the Tories included. will not fall apart. If she does not, they will. We should have a much clearer idea on Fri- day afternoon, 14 October, when Mrs That- cher sits down to her ovation in Blackpool s Winter Gardens at the end of the Tory Par' ty conference and of the conference season, and at the end of the beginning of the new political year and of the new politics the June election ushered in.
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