Having a Party

A centrist force is born

As he rose to address his colleagues in the House of Commons one evening last week, former Foreign Secretary David Owen's hands trembled visibly. Over the years he had spoken on countless occasions from his accustomed place on the Labor Party's front bench. This time, standing at a physical and political remove from his old colleagues, Owen launched the new Social Democratic Party, a movement that could change the face of British politics.

The previous day, Owen and eleven other Members of Parliament had resigned from the Labor Party. When they formally constitute themselves as the Social Democrats within the next month, they will become the first significant national party to be formed in Britain since Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in 1932. For Labor, it was the most dramatic defection since 1931, when Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald led a walkout in order to head a national government.

The rebellion was led by four former Labor Cabinet ministers who put their careers on the line in order to spotlight their deep dismay at the increasing power of the far left in the Labor Party. The first to bolt was Shirley Williams, former Education Secretary and for years one of Labor's most popular front benchers. She resigned last month from the Labor national executive committee, declaring pointedly that "the party I loved and worked for no longer exists." She was followed by Owen, former Transportation Minister William Rodgers, and onetime Deputy Party Leader and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. For the present, the four plan to share the new party's leadership.

With their twelve Commons seats, the Social Democrats already have a presence in Parliament, where they rank as the third largest group, ahead of the Liberals (eleven seats) though far behind the Conservatives (337 seats) and Labor (255). At the party's seven-room London headquarters, plans are being pressed to enlist the aid of the "millions of people" who Owen believes will back the Social Democrats. A team of 25 volunteers were answering 30,000 letters from prospective party members. The total contributions to date: $132,000.

The Social Democrats' hopes for real power rest with their plan for an alliance with the Liberals, with whom they share the middle road between Conservative Prune Minister Margaret Thatcher's doctrinaire capitalism and the increasingly far-left leanings of the Labor Party. Britons like the alternative of a Liberal-Social Democrat coalition; in the latest Gallup poll that combination won an approval rating of 44%, which was 17 points ahead of either of the major parties.

Though the Social Democratic movement was being dismissed only weeks ago by both Labor regulars and Tories as a press creation and a fruitless exercise by a few elitists, no one is laughing now at what the party might achieve. Labor's leader, Michael Foot, pleaded with the defectors "until the twelfth hour" not to leave the party, but the appeal came too late. The Tories are equally fearful that some of their own restive dissidents may find their way to the Social Democrats. Conservative Party Chairman Lord Thorneycroft last week issued a letter asking Tories to stick with their party despite the government's present economic difficulties.

The leader of the Liberals, David Steel, now faces the delicate challenge of persuading his party to let the newly minted Social Democrats take the field uncontested in some promising constituencies. That is a generosity not without risk. The new party brings to the political hustings two vital attributes the Liberals lack: momentum and credibility.

The long-established Liberals may find themselves the junior partner in the new coalition.

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