Shirley Williams: Politics is for People, Penguin, 1981, £2.50.
Many reviewers have commented upon the lack of originality and the banality which characterise Shirley Williams' book. Barbara Wootton, writing in New Society, wrote that Shirley's outpourings had almost driven her to espouse Marxism. Wootton and Bernard Crick who reviewed the book in The Guardian are by no stretch of the imagination foot-soldiers of Benn's 'New Model Army'; their remarks will hurt the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) far more than any review in a journal of the far left. The question is: are Crick and Wootton correct to dismiss Ms Williams in so summary a fashion? Yes and no.
On the level of ideas, the book is a melange of timeless reformist aspirations and bankrupt political ideology. The tension is well-expressed in comparing Ms Williams' two heroes: the dead theorist Tawney and the living pragmatist Dahrendorf. The result is gibberish: some of it well-meant, some of it sinister.
It is on the level of practice that the SDP enterprise is more original, Previous Labour revisionism has taken one of two forms. Ramsay Macdonald led a large section of the Parliamentary Labour Party into alliance with the Tories leaving the party crippled for years while its erstwhile leaders argued explicitly for the maintenance of capitalism despite the large-scale poverty, mass unemployment and naked exploitation which characterised Britain in the 1930s.
In the 1950s, a theoretical revision was attempted by Strachey, Crosland and Gaitskell which culminated in the unsuccessful attempt to remove Clause Four from the Labour Party constitution, Hypnotised by the economic boom, Crosland and his comrades argued that capitalism had solved most of its problems: unemployment was a nightmare of the past; classes, in the classical sense, no longer existed; and 'mankind was poised on the threshold of abundance', In such a situation there was clearly neither room nor necessity for socialism.
The originality of Jenkins, Williams and their friends lies in their attempt to combine these two approaches. They do not wish to go over to Thatcher as that would be the shortest step to political extinction. Since Thatcher is neither a Disraeli nor a Baldwin, the next best thing is to create a political party in which the ghosts of the two Tory patriarchs can mingle with their present-day admirers. The aim of the SDP is not simply to split the Labour Party but the Tories as well. It is on the later point that the owners of capital are seriously divided: the almost unanimous support for the SDP in the media should not lead us to assume that the City of London wants a split in the Conservative Party.
When I started reading Ms Williams' book I hoped that there would be at least the flickerings of one or two new ideas with which to engage. I was disappointed. There are few paragraphs in the entire book that could not have been penned by Edward Heath. The book is a hymn of praise to the consensus which has dominated postwar politics in Britain.
Thatcher, at least, understands that consensus politics cannot work in conditions of mass unemployment and social crisis. The 'Limehouse Declaration' seeks to institutionalise the status quo with these profound words: 'to maintain a healthy public sector without frequent frontier changes.' Ms Williams' book is a 'sincere', 'nice', 'honest', 'well-meaning', attempt to defend this indefensible proposition while maintaining the ambiguities which dominated the launching of the SDP. On external politics Ms Williams and friends are merely the human face of Thatcherism, They are committed to strengthening capitalism in Europe; they are in favour of Britain maintaining nuclear weapons and playing a leading role in NATO and they argue passionately for giving more money to the Third World — in order to prevent social revolutions.
We can well ask 'so what's new?' Was it necessary to leave the Labour Party to argue for such policies? Are not Denis Healey, Roy Hattersley and their supporters putting forward similar arguments? True they have to pay a price. Healey has to be seen on platforms at mass demonstrations against unemployment; Hattersley has to wear a cloth cap and join the People's March when it passes through Birmingham; John Silkin has to pretend that he is on the left. But these are trifles and can surely be forgotten when Labour is back in office. Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and David Owen have no fundamental differences with the Labour right wing currently organised in the Labour Solidarity Campaign except on two questions; trade unions and the EEC.
'The unions are too powerful!' scream the Tories and the Liberals. 'We agree', reply Ms Williams and co. It is the fear of an organised working class which drives the right wing away from the Labour Party. The fear is understandable. What is involved here is not the subjective desires or intentions of extreme right-wing trade union leader A or left-wing trade union leader B, but the objective position of the trade unions in contemporary British society, They represent the single most important democratic gain of the working class,
Shirley Williams' 'public interest' is an utterly bogus concept. Bourgeois commentators more astute than she have no problems in admitting that it is the interests of private capital which determine the policies of successive governments. And the organisational strength of the unions is an obstacle to Capital.
The great fear which the SDP current reflects is that a new Labour government would be under very heavy pressure to institute a number of socialist measures. The Alternative Economic Strategy is not a strategy for socialism (it is many years behind the official platform of Allende's Socialist Party), but it would undoubtedly create a further polarisation between Labour and Capital if implemented.
Ms Williams' latest supporter, Sue Slipman, is not as foolish as is commonly [illegible] because she has joined the SDP. Right-wing 'Eurocommunism' and the SDP share a dread of the 'ultra-left' in the Labour Party. Slipman and her friends fear a military coup in the event of a Labour government trying to implement any radical measures In such an eventuality, they inquire (naive souls that they are), would it not be a better to preserve bourgeois democracy? The SDP is their 'historic compromise' with the most radical defenders of the English bourgeoisie,
In her ostrich-like desperation to avoid the conflict between opposed social forces, Shirley Williams prefers to ignore the polarisation which is taking place in Britain today. To ascribe Benn's popularity to the fact that he is a 'gifted liar' or a 'demagogue' or whatever insults are bandied about in the salons of the rich may satisfy the complacent. The facts are somewhat different. In a political situation where the interests of the ruling class are defended with manic zeal by a leader such as Margaret Thatcher, the only figure in the Labour Party who appears dynamic and capable of resisting the Tory onslaught is Tony Benn, That is why his support transcends the narrow confines of the constituency Labour parties (important though these are) and extends into the factories and the ranks of the unemployed Benn's programme has its limitations, but the combination of radical democracy and social reformism is stronger than anything Ms Williams has to offer.
Politics Is For People is an unfortunate title as the whole volume, despite its pseudo-democratic rhetoric and its talk of decentralisation, is littered with the most gross defence of elitism. With the help of Immanuel Kant, we are told; 'Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made.' Those who think otherwise, like Trotskyists, are uncurable romantics, nay, latter-day Utopians. Why? Because they believe that perfect revolutions are possible with 'imperfect' human beings. The logic is obvious: if human beings are 'imperfect' then a tiny band of 'perfect' people will put things right. The old Fabian concepts come out with a vengeance. Why then, may we ask, did such an honest person choose such a dishonest title? Two alternatives come to mind: Politics is For Us or the slightly more provocative No Claret For The Yobboes.
One of the few arguments advanced in the book against revolutionary Marxists is that they are against pluralism in the economy and therefore, despite what they say, they must be against pluralism in the political sphere. The notion is false on every count. The capitalist economy is not 'pluralistic' in the real sense of the word. The state capitalist sectors of all capitalist economies are subordinated to the needs of private capital on the domestic and international level. The working class, the largest social class in the country, under normal circumstances has no control of any sector.
Secondly it is simply not the case that a 'mixed economy' is a guarantor of democratic rights. The German state from 1933-44 was a 'mixed economy' par excellence. A proto-Keynesian state sector co-existed happily with a private sector which doubled and quadrupled its profits as the Nazi regime ensured that the only pluralism that existed was confined to the concentration camps,
Thirdly, we would insist that only socialist revolutions will permit the establishment of far-reaching forms of direct democracy on a scale never before seen on this continent. Such a revolution will only be possible if the vast majority of workers take their destiny in their own hands, Marx and Engels declared in the Communist Manifesto that the emancipation of the working class can only be accomplished by the working class itself. Lenin developed this thought further and, after much empirical study, insisted that the workers would need a political party to help win the final victories against a ruling class which was well-organised politically and militarily.
Shirley Williams attempts to reconstruct the ideas of a dilapidated Fabian theocracy in order to tell us that 'human nature' rules and an 'enlightened' elite is crucial. Unable to win many in her former party to these ideas she now casts her net even further, The game is by no means over, There will be many more surprises in store for everyone before the decade is over, but the diluted rhetoric of Politics Is For People is of little use for the ruling class.
It needs something more vigorous. We would venture to predict that many in the SDP will denounce this book as being too contaminated with 'left' ideas in the years that follow,