THE SPECTATOR
THE LOOSE CANNON
In 1931 the Labour Party suffered an electoral defeat of seemingly catastrophic Proportions, emerging with only 52 MPs compared with 289 in 1929. Yet in retros- pect we can see, as contemporaries prob- ably could not, that the general election of 1931 represented in one vital respect a decisive step in the Labour Party's climb from obscurity to that day in 1945 when Lord ShawcroSs was able to proclaim, `We are the masters now.' For it was in 1931 that the British people, after experiencing more than a decade of confusion and uncertainty, found itself once again with a simplified two-party system. And Labour, despite its poor showing, had emerged as one of those two parties. Although the Labour vote in 1931 had fallen since 1929 from 8,664,000 to 6,649,000, the Liberals had declined far more drastically: they were down from 5,301,000 votes to just 1,430,000. The Upshot was that the Labour party in the aftermath of 1931 soon came to be seen as the only viable alternative to the Conservative-dominated so-called Nation- al Government. Two general elections later and Clement Attlee Was in Downing Street with a massive working majority, something that could not have happened but for the Liberal catastrophe of 1931. The question we face today is whether the events of 1987 are likely to represent a watershed similar to 1931. In terms of the actual election result the Alliance parties, With over seven million votes, have by no means suffered a catastrophe comparable to that experienced by their Liberal prede- cessors. Nevertheless the Alliance's post- election inquest has assumed such frenzied qualities as to persuade us that the year 1987 will soon come to be widely acknow- ledged as having been for the Labour Party, for all its disappointing electoral showing, something of a disguised annus rnirabilis.
True, the restoration of the two-party System has not yet been proclaimed as fact by the majority of pundits. But those who doubt that we are heading in that direction should tell us what kind of third force they foresee contesting the next General Elec- tion. In the light of all that has recently been said can they possibly imagine Dr David Owen fighting with the least credi- bility under any joint banner with Liberals, et alone serving in any kind of leadership team with Mr David. Steel? And we ain't seen nothin' yet — with the knives being sharpened ahead of the announcement next month of the result of the SDP ballot. The actual result, howev- er, will be of less importance than the fact that it will have taken place at all. For the losers, whoever they are, seem certain to do the cause of two-party politics a power of good.
If Dr Owen wins the ballot we may expect mass defections to the Liberals from among the minority, leaving behind a legacy of bruised feelings and little or no prospect of amicable future arrangements between the two centre parties on either policy or the allocation of candidatures. And if Dr Owen loses the ballot we know already that he will simply refuse to accept the humiliation so ruthlessly prepared for him by the shortsighted pygmies he has so comprehensively outshone in recent years. He may indeed see fit to prolong the agony by fighting a rearguard action over the proposed terms for a merger. But within twelve months it seems certain that he would feel driven to form his own party of visceral anti-Liberals. Either way, then, there will be an Owen-led party whose relations with either the Liberals or a merged Alliance Party will be so poisonous as to put serious future electoral collabora- tion beyond the bounds of credibility. Only the two old parties can benefit.
The only really interesting question now is what course Dr Owen will chart for the remnant of a party that he will presently dominate almost without check. Some see him as destined to fail in parliamentary politics as surely as did Oswald Mosley after forming the New Party in February 1931— not even being able to hold his own seat at the following general election. But Owen presumably has at least four years rather than Mosley's one to make an impact and he is in any case more res- trained and measured than the last lost leader. Two broad possibilities may thus beckon him to a prominent future role of a sort.
First, he may decide to try to shape his party into something the Gang of Four's SDP has never been, namely a populist grouping consciously aiming to appeal to the Alf Garnett brigade among traditional Labour voters. Such a party might attract a few Labour MPs humiliated by deselection or demotion from the Shadow Cabinet. And with forces of a populist nature in positions of some influence in certain trade unions, for example among the Electri- cians and the Democratic Mineworkers, some scope might exist for a spectacular by-election showing (such as another Ber- mondsey).
The lion in Dr Owen's path if he adopts this approach, however, is that it would have to be tested in conditions where the two-party system would probably be seen to be flourishing again. A second, albeit populist, attempt to break the mould so soon after the failure of the first would, to say the least, need to be assisted by many strokes of good fortune.
We are thus led to predict the most likely course for Dr Owen and his followers. It is that they will gradually be sucked into the orbit of the Conservative Party. Few of those concerned, including Dr Owen him- self, may yet realise that this is where the logic of their situation is pointing. Fun- damental is the premise that the two-party system will soon be seen to have been fully restored to health. Then most serious politicians will inevitably develop, as in the past, a clear preference. for Labour (although it could, conceivably, have a different name) or the Conservatives.
In such circumstances many Liberal activists will surely be tempted to switch to Labour. And die-hard Liberals, while not tempted to switch parties, are likely to put out feelers, probably in vain, for electoral pacts at local or natural level with a reviving Labour Party.
But if that is how the Liberals want to move in the near future — and we are already seeing portents of it — will not Dr Owen and his followers come to see it as their duty to balance such a tendency by making increasingly common cause with the Conservatives? The Conservatives might actually be more welcoming and electorally accommodating to Dr Owen than Labour would be to the Liberals. For while the Conservatives' need, with a Commons majority of 100 seats, is apparently less than Labour's, they have fewer zealots to worry about. Hence Mr Douglas Hurd could without rebuke call on SDPers to join the Tories, whereas no leading Labour figure seems likely to issue a similar invitation to Liberals let alone urge burying the hatchet with Mrs Shirley Williams by, say, offering to make hei Baroness Grunwick. In short, Dr Owen's prospects may not resemble those of Oswald Mosley in 1931 so much as those of Joseph Chamberlain in 1885.
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