Running scared? JUI.15 :981 The Social Democratic Party is not
emerging with much credit from its first encounter with real-life politics. The appointment of Warrington's sitting Labour MP as a judge will bring about the first by-election (Fermanagh and South Tyrone, which is irrelevant in this context, apart) since the giddy March days when the new party was launched by the old Gang of Four. There has been much comment that the Social Democrats have been unfortunate in this byelection. The present Labour majority is over ten thousand, which is thought to be beyond the capacity of any Social Democrat to crack. It is away in the North-West rather than down in the South-East; It has no great recent Liberal tradition, nor has it a flighty political past. Yet in some respects its very defects, from the Social Democratic point of view, should make it tolerably attractive.
A Social Democratic defeat at Warrington would not be accounted a political disaster; a triumph would be a veritable prodigy which could well cast the mantle of leader of the new party over the victor. Moreover, looking ahead to the next general election and beyond, if the Social Democratic Party is to be other than a regional SouthEastern grouping of Labour moderates and disaffected Tories attracted by glossy images and lists of celebrities, it must surely be able to attack solid Labour seats. Social Democrats, with one or two unnotable exceptions, are Labour Party people who have despaired of the political direction of the Labour Party and their own prospects inside it and who, claiming that they and not the Labour Party they have left most truly represent the Labour vote and the Labour tradition, have set up shop to represent that vote and that tradition and to advance their own political careers thereby. It cannot do them much good to te seen to be running away from Warrington, which is precisely the sort of seat they should be capable of winning, if their ambitions are to succeed and their analysis of the Labour Party and its popular support is to be proved sound. It might have been expected that Mr Roy Jenkins and Mrs Shirley Williams would have both been anxious to be the first to raise the Social Democratic banner. Both very obviously hope to become the first leader of their Party, and both know perfectly well that they must first get themselves elected to Parliament. When they were founding their Party, public opinion polls put the Social Democrats far phead of t olitical parties Gallup, for exaimple7 fiti 'against the Tories' 22.5 per cent and Labour's mere 20 per cent. These figures, when put alongside an unpopular Tory government, high unemployment and economic recession, suggest that the Social Democrats, simply by getting themselves started, were massively eroding the Labour vote. No seat, especially no Labour seat, could be presumed to be safe from their attentions. Warrington, had anyone thought of it at the time, might well have been expected to succumb. Yet Mr Roy Jenkins and Mrs Shirely Williams have been ' most reluctant to stand.
'What is being attempted today is a gamble, of course. Yet if that gamble is not attempted, failure for the country is probable.' Thus Mrs Williams on 26 March, first day of the new Party. The hunger of many people for a new political beginning is evident,' she wrote, and added: 'There never was a better moment to make a new beginning than now.' What has happened since 26 March, so that now she flinches from the gamble, is reluctant to feed the hungry multitude, concludes that this is not the best time for her, at least, to lead the new beginning? The same question may be addressed to Mr Jenkins, another reluctant suitor of the Warrington electorate. What are they waiting for?
If the hesitations of Mr Jenkins and Mrs Williams to raise the banner in Warrington cast 'doubt on the courage and quality of the new Party and its competing leaders, what is the country to make of the Liberal Party in its Warrington muddle? It has local organisation and premises, but nothing much of a track record. Mr David Steel, anxious that the Social Democrats should tackle a seat not to his liking, attempted to insist that a 'national figure' should stand for the Social Democrats at the price of Liberal withdrawal and support. 'National figure' presumably meant either Mrs Williams or Mr Jenkins; but subsequently it appeared that either Professor David Marquand or the son of the departing member would do. Not getting his guaranteed 'national figure', Mr Steel has nonetheless withdrawn from Warrington, settling for first option for the Liberals to fight the next by-election that crops up. Here is political courage to equal Mr Jenkins's and Mrs Williams's! What are they all scared of? It can only be the electorate.
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