FOCUS Marxism Today August 1982 3

SDP LEADERSHIP

Many of those who voted for David Owen in the SDP leadership election will, on reflection, be relieved that it was his oppo­ nent who won. It is said that Owen's supporters are those who, looking soberly at the May local elec­ tion results, see the need for a distinct party presence and therefore a leader convinced of that need and young enough to be interested in creating it over the years it would take to realise. But before you can embark on the long haul, you have to survive the short haul. With Owen as leader, an autumn elec­ tion would have seen the Liberal-SDP alliance much more publicly strained; not through open disagreement between Liberal leader and Owen, but through the legitimacy Owen's ambitions for himself and his party would have given to Liberal purists one or two ranks down. The Alliance's only credible alternative Prime Minister would have been reduced to a muted and ambiguous role and the prospect would have had to be faced both of the SDP's parliamentary strength being reduced and of its finishing with many fewer seats than the Liberals. Such an outcome is still possible, but Mrs Thatcher must know that Jenkins has the weight to fight back powerfully with a couple of (well publicised, of course) speeches. (It is, incidentally, a sign of the critical point British politics has reached that such relatively detailed ques­ tions have to be taken seriously into account.) In his days as a leader of the Labour Party, Roy Jenkins was notorious for being remote from the mass of the party and its activists; and his famous period of lethargy (or lazi­ ness) will not help him in his new role. But there are a number of potentially serious problems in the SDP to which he will now have to devote some attention. There is a fairly clear division between the 'reformers' and the 'centrists' in the party. This is reflected, for example, in the issue of whether a number of seats should be reserved for women on the policy-making Council for . This pro­ duced a tied vote at the constitutional con­ vention earlier this year, and 43% of the membership voted for it in the constitu­ tional referendum that followed. Jenkins is aware that this is a section which he cannot 4 August 1982 Marxism Today

either there would have to be a merger, or one party will disappear as an effective force. Once again, Jenkins will have the awkward job of reconciling what the public and his allies want with what a sizeable chunk of his party want to hear. A problem which the SDP has so far treated with superb indifference is that of its umerical size. It is true that the Tories' l.5 million and to some extent the Liberals' 200,000 or so are somewhat loosely attached; and the Labour Party's estimates have been scaled down from about 600,000 to a more realistic 300,000 over the last few years. Nevertheless, a current membership for the SDP of under 65,000 (up a bit from the 62,372 eligible to vote in the leadership poll) should be worrying. Recruitment fell off dramatically, of course, during the Fal- klands crisis, and it was to be expected that many of those who joined in the spring of 1981 would drop out. But an actual decline of nearly 10,000 since the beginning of the year must mean that something like a third of the first crop fell away; and on the current estimate, of something over 200 a week join­ ing, even with a more normal drop-out rate one would not expect the membership to grow dramatically beyond its present figure. On a generous assumption that one in four are activists, that gives, on average, a couple of dozen active workers per parliamentary constituency. A 'membership drive' is planned for September, and the Gower by- election is expected to give a boost; but Jen­ thrust aside, and indeed almost his first act kins or somebody is going to have to devote as leader was to ask to attend the first confer­ more consistent attention to it than that, if ence of Women for Social Democracy on only to avoid being outdone almost every­ July 3. But he will constantly be faced with where by the Liberals when it comes to work issues like the one which surfaced there on at local level. So far most of the SDP's lead­ incomes policy: should it simply be a ers — epitomised in this respect at least by restraining mechanism or should it, as some Jenkins — give the impression that they of the women argue, be partly a redistribu- think they can ignore the classic lesson tive tool? In the great majority of cases (as in learned by the Tories a hundred years ago: this) Jenkins' instinct is for the more con­ that however effective political leaders may servative option. He will clearly have to try be, mass suffrage necessitates a mass party. to maintain the party's unity by projecting its aim as something like 'national reconci­ Paul Olive liation through reform (but not too much)'; a tricky act to pull off. Since David Steel is commonly held to be a Social Democratic sort of Liberal, and Jen­ kins is thought to be a Liberal sort of Social Democrat, the fears of members of both par­ ties are likely to revive that a merger between the two parties might be arranged. But if, in the run-up to a general election, it looks as if the alliance will not do well enough to force the introduction of propor­ tional representation, then it will have to be faced: parties claiming to be fully national organisations cannot indefinitely remove themselves from half the constituencies in the country. If PR were not achieved, then