By the time this issue of International is published a general election could have been called — at any rate it cannot now be far off. There is a very good chance indeed that the Tories will win it outright, perhaps with an increased majority, What is most unlikely, Tony Benn notwithstanding, is that Labour will win. The socialist left must take careful stock of the present critical situation, in order to be able to arm itself for the tasks ahead.
The fundamental trends of development of British politics have to be firmly grasped. As the crisis of British capitalism deepens, there is a long term trend of decline of both the Tory party and British social democracy, The 'high tide of Toryism' was the election of 1931, won by the National Government. The Tories and their allies won with 64 per cent of the vote. Thatcher could win the coming election with something like 38 per cent, certainly she will probably not get more than 40 per cent of the poll. In 1970 Heath won with 46 per cent.
To put it another way, the vote of the non-Tory, non-Labour parties has been going up since 1955. This election will see that trend continue. If Thatcher wins by a clear majority it will be because of the vagaries of the election system,
This secular decline of the votes of the two major parties conforms to the political crisis imposed by the economic decline of British capitalism. From the point of view of the working class, the political crisis is taking the form of the death agony of the Labour Party. If Labour cannot win the coming election, first and foremost it will be because of the rise of the SDP and the fact that a section of the Labour vote has been taken with it, Even if the SDP were to suffer a major reverse at the coming polls in terms of seats, the extent of its impact can be gauged from this fact alone.
Thatcherism has not been a success at an economic level. If average profitability of firms rose in 1982, it was merely a statistical consequence of the number of bankruptcies. Only 3 per cent of the total investment of British capitalists is going into manufacturing industries, while huge amounts go abroad. Even if there is a slight world upturn in the economy, Britain will find it very hard to share in any 'revival'. The collapse of British manufacturing industry is so severe that any upturn will be very partial and short lived.
A new Tory government therefore will be one forced to take much harsher measures against the working class than has hitherto been the case. Indeed Thatcher openly proclaims that she needs three terms in office to complete her programme of restoring British capitalism. A truly massive attack on workers living standards and a much harsher assault on the welfare State is what the Tories are planning for the next five years.
If the Tories are not re-elected with an overall majority, then the most likely outcome is a hung parliament with the SDP/Liberals holding the balance of power, Either way the labour movement will face fundamental questions of how it responds to the challenge of being in opposition again.
If the Tories are elected, then the right wing of the Labour Party will want 'respectable' Parliamentary opposition, possibly in an alliance with the SDP/Liberals. The issue of fighting back against the ravages of a second round of Thatcherism, through a mass campaigning Labour Party which promotes workers struggles, will have to be counterposed by the left to any form of parliamentary pact. The response of the Labour leadership to the recent strike of Cowley — silence — does not auger well in this respect.
If there is no overall parliamentary majority, the pressure for a coalition with the SDP/Liberals will be much more direct. Terry Duffy of the AUEW has spelled out the consequences of this very directly: Labour must abandon its radical policies of disarmament, the EEC and incomes policy to ensure the possibility of coalition. Indeed, this — in addition to electoral reform — would be precisely the price demanded by the SDP/Liberal alliance.
A further conclusion has to be reached on this basis: the struggles in the Labour party are far from over. The relative quiescence in the Labour Party in the pre-election period has led to many illusions. The first is that, following the publication of the New Hope for Britain, the right wing has accepted the bulk of the left's policy demands. But the opposite is true: the 'left' character of this document is merely symptomatic of the right's assessment that Labour will not win, and that Labour's leadership never be challenged to put these policies into effect.
What would follow a Labour election defeat would in all probability be a battle against coalitionism of a direct or indirect kind, and a new leadership struggle. Moreover, the right wing in the middle of such struggle would certainly reach for the witch hunt weapon again.
Thatcherism cannot be combatted by counterposing to it the failed social democratic solutions of yesteryear. Only if the labour movement is able to present, in the course of struggle, a bold alternative socialist vision of economy and social life, will the ideological offensive of Thatcherism be blunted. The Labour leadership is an unlikely source of such an alternative.