The Politics of Confusion the Old Loyalties Have Weakened and the Two-Party System Is Now Under Threat

6 February 1982 Marxism Today Chris Husbands The Politics of Confusion The old loyalties have weakened and the two-party system is now under threat The success so far of the SDP has clearly been based almost entirely have coincided to produce the most propitious situation for a new upon negative rather than positive motives, upon protest voting and party making an appeal largely on the basis of spurious novelty. perverseness rather than upon any genuinely and consistently artic- There are certain voting trends in British politics that are by now ulated ideology of the political 'middle ground'. However, it is well known and have been widely discussed. There is the decline in important to recognise the nature of the factors that have underlain support for the two major parties. In October 1951 96.8% of the the SDP's growth, because they may have implications for its short United Kingdom's turnout of 82.5% voted Labour or Conservative. and medium term development. It must be appreciated that those By May 1979 only 80.8% of votes were cast for Conservative or considerations which have been adduced to predict the likely evanes- Labour on a turnout of 76.0%, and the Conservatives' overall cence of the SDP may in fact imply the reverse, that its support may majority of 43 seats was won, as in 1970, from the support of barely a not be quite so volatile after all. The SDP's general lack of policies; third of the eligible electorate. the lack-lustre nature of most of its leadership; the deadbeat charac- As well as a trend away from the two major parties, there has been ter of some of the MPs and local councillors whom it has attracted; a corresponding decline in the strength of partisan attachment to the self-confessed political naivety of many of its activists; the fact these parties, even among those who nominally identify with them. that one of its few widely known policy positions — continued This trend is now also well known, having been documented by a membership of the EEC — is opposed by many of its nominal succession of poll data since the early 1960s.2 One consequence of supporters' : in a more rational political world where voting the decline in the proportion of the electorate with strong partisan behaviour was predicated upon balanced and informed judgements attachments has been increased political detachability and volatility about competing alternatives, these defects would quickly be fatal, among the electorate. Symptoms of this are several. producing uncertainty and disillusion even among its most favou- One is dramatic oscillation in the support of the individual major rably disposed supporters. However, the SDP's rise has occurred in parties, as reported month-by-month in the opinion polls, whether a political climate in which negative voting has become so wide- this has been for the government or the opposition party.3 The spread that considerations of this sort may impinge only slowly upon Gallup Poll's month by month support for the 1951-55 Tory Gov- the motives and attitudes of those voters disposed towards the party. ernment never rose above 48% or fell below 40%. The support for Part of this article argues that the SDP has been established at a the 1955-59 Tory government varied between 48% and (briefly) time when political circumstances were perhaps at their most aus- 33.5% and registered almost no impact at the time of the Suez crisis. picious for the party's success. To be sure, this was not intentional The range for the 1959-64 Tory government was from 50% to a brief since events in the Labour Party were the precipitating causes of the minimum of 31% at the time of the Profumo affair. The 1966-70 SDP's foundation; even so, it will be shown that its take-off has Labour government at one point early in its term had the expressed occurred at a time when several long term and short term factors support of 53.5% per cent of the electorate, though it also reached a Marxism Today February 1982 7 new nadir in May and June 1968 of 28%. The 1970-74 Tory than was the opposition and, within eighteen months, it was enter- government ranged between 47% and 31.5% and the last Labour ing the nadir of its popular appeal. However, there are certain government's support varied from a maximum of 48.5% to a mini- paradoxes about the trends in its support. Its ratings held reasonably mum of 30%. The Thatcher government has never been supported steady during the earlier period of its term of office when wages were by more than 42% and at 26.5% its November Gallup Poll rating barely keeping pace with prices. The decline in Labour's support plumbed depths reached by no other recent government. occurred at the time when there was a modest improvement in the Electoral volatility has also revealed itself in dramatic swings average standard of living, although the parallel paths of the two against the sitting government in parliamentary by-elections since series from mid-1968 to late 1969 show that in this period increases the mid-1960s. Swings of up to 20% and more have become far from in the actual cost of living were about commensurate with increases unknown in by-elections in the last fifteen years. in wages. One reason for the Wilson government's lack of popularity Finally, there has been the widely discussed phenomenon of the was its dubious competence in handling unemployment. The levels 'class dealignment' of British politics over the past two decades, ie, of unemployment in that period were minuscule from the perspec- the decline of the relationship between class membership and voting tive of the present. Even so, the rate of unemployment more than behaviour. In October 1964 the percentage advantage in favour of doubled between 1966 and 1970, much of the increase occurring in the Conservatives over Labour among upper middle class voters was the first year of the government's term of office. Labour's popularity 53%; by May 1979 it had declined to 44%, still high but a marked seems to have survived this but it was undoubtedly affected by the fall nonetheless. Complementarily, in October 1964 Labour's per- continued refusal of the Wilson government to adopt policies that would substantially ameliorate the situation, and the rate persisted one consequence has been increased political at a plateau of 2.2 to 2.5% for the final three years of its term. volatility among the electorate The 1970-74 Tory government Unemployment remains a factor in accounting for the Gallup Poll centage advantage over the Conservatives among working class ratings of Heath's 1970-74 government. The rate rose gently but voters was 28% but by May 1979 it was only 7%. In the latter steadily until early 1972 and this was undoubtedly a factor in the election skilled manual working class voters and their wives who early and sharp decline in popular support for the Heath govern- opted for one of the two major parties divided their loyalties almost ment till mid-1971. The later decline in unemployment was not equally between Conservative and Labour. sufficient substantially to improve the ratings of this government in 'Class dealignment' has been of particular significance among the latter part of its term of office, when it was also afflicted by a certain sections of the electorate. It is noticeable, for example, growing level of Liberal support. Yet there is one very clear and among younger middle class voters, although younger working class perhaps surprising aspect about the Heath government's term of voters in 1979 were not significantly less pro-Labour than older office; the average standard of living improved fairly steadily and ones. However, it is perhaps the regional variations that are most consistently throughout the period, as is shown by the increase and interesting. Labour support among manual workers and their wives the divergence of the two series, the general index of retail prices and ranged in 1979 from 32% in the South West to 60% in the North of the wage-rate index. The only suggestion of future difficulties on England.4 Such differences are also suggested by the variations in this subject is the slight upward turn in the retail price index in swing to the Conservatives from region to region. The pro-Tory consequence of the world economic upheavals after the Yom Kippur swing, calculated upon total votes cast, between October 1974 and War. Even so, the Heath government's popularity was affected by its May 1979 was 6.5% among Greater London constituencies and attempt to impose a strict public-sector pay policy and, ironically, by 6.9% in the rest of the South East. In the West Yorkshire conurba- the fact that retail prices — irrespective of any average trends in real tion it was 3.5% and in seats in the Greater Manchester conurbation wages — rose by more than 10% a year from mid-1970 to early 1974, it was only 2.9%. 1 This finding and certain others reported later in the article have been taken CHANGES IN PERCEPTIONS OF GOVERNMENTAL from various polls carried out by NOP Market Research Limited, some COMPETENCE conducted on behalf of The Observer. I am grateful to both NOP and also The These long term trends all establish the political context in which it Observer for permitting me to take information from unpublished tabulations. has been possible for a party such as the SDP to break through the 2 barrier of minimum electoral support and become a seemingly See, for example, Ivor Crewe, 'The Labour Party and the Electorate', in Dennis Kavanagh (ed), The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Allen and viable alternative.

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