Time to break the party mould

Mrs Shirley Williams outlines the vision of harmony at the heart of the new Social Democratic Party
THE SOCIAL Democratic Party is high risk, a gamble that may succeed or fail.
Those of us involved in it, spending our days organising local parties addressing meetings (and what amazing meetings they are, of hundreds and even thousands of people), expounding our policies, are building a party we believe in. an internationalist party. a party of conscience and social justice. a part!. committed to healing the present widening gulf in British politics.
The 55.000 who have so far joined us come from every walk of life and every reaion. Some have been active members of political parties, others have never shown any interest in politics before.
Those of us who were engaged in politics. including our 14 MPs and our four collective leaders. became more and more disturbed by the way the two traditional parties were moving to extremes. British politics has always been class-based: of course some trades unionists voted Conservative, probably as many as two-fifths at the last election, Of course some executive and professional people voted Labour. But by and large, the two big parties have each represented one side of industry and one section of the community — the boardroom in the case of the Conservatives. the shopfloor in the case of Labour.
Politics has been, especially recently. the politics of instinctive antagonism: it was enough to know that the other party had done it to denounce it as wrong. So successive governments have repealed. cancelled and destroyed, not asking whether what had been done was good or bad.
Neither industry nor education can survive so much chopping and changing. Small wonder that British industry has little confidence in so uncertain a future. or that schools find it so hard to plan.
Automatic antagonism has now turned into dogmatism: one party sticking obstinately to monetarism, the other flirting dangerously with Trotskyism.
Monetarism has brought in its train the highest level of unemployment since the great depression. In many areas a third of young people are without jobs. Despairing, they listen to those who peddle wild and dangerous doctrines.
Many companies have been bankrupted by low orders and high interest rates. The Government argues that this is all due to the world recession. It is not. Unemployment has risen much faster in Britain than in most other European countries or in the United States. The Conservatives are creating extremists, and putting immense strain on the fabric of our social and political life.
Within the Labour Party two incompatible philosophies have been battling for years, Marxism and radicalism. Marxism accepts the control of the party over people and over those they elect. The Party is supreme — as the members of Solidarity in Poland were warned once again last week.
Radicalism has its roots elsewhere — in Christian socialism, in co-operation and in common ownership. It believes human beings should never be instruments, either of the State or of private corporations, but rather that they should realise their full potential in a community of mutual help and mutual service.
Sadly, the Marxist strand within Labour thinking has come to dominate the radical approach. Labour caucuses are seeking to control elected Labour councillors and MPs, binding them to the manifesto and threatening them with reselection if they do not conform.
In London, councillors are bound to the policies adopted by the London Labour Party conference — even though those policies never need be put before the electorate at all,
The Labour Co-ordinating Committee, which is the voice of the dominant left on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, recently issued a pamphlet called "How to Select or Reselect your MP". It said nothing about how welt he or she represented the constituency, but it did list the issues to be taken into account in deciding whether or not the MP should be reselected.
Among these issues was the Corrie Bill on abortion. In short, voting for tighter control over abortion is now regarded as one ground for getting rid of an MR It is an intolerable restraint on the individual conscience.
The Social Democrats. appalled by the savage and unjust economic policies of the Tory Government, but equally appalled by a Labour Party daily becoming more like an Eastern European Communist party, decided to offer an alternative.
The time has come to break the mould of the two party system. That requires two things, a new voting system and an alliance with the other moderate party. the Liberals, so that we do not destroy one another. The voting system, we believe, should be proportional representation, a system that works well in the Republic of Ireland. Germany and elsewhere.
The alliance with the Liberals is developing, and this week we issued a joint statement of principles on policy and organisation.
Ending the antagonistic twoparty system is essential to our objectives. Both sides of industry should now accept a mixed economy: that means supporting good companies whether in the private or the public sector, and investing our wealth from North Sea oil in new industries, in public transport and in vocational training for young people. It is inhumane to control inflation by massive unemployment: we would try instead to agree on an incomes policy with industry and the trades unions, but we believe that real partnership can only be achieved by much more participation by workers in industry, including industrial democracy. coownership and profit-sharing indeed a modern expression of the spirit so farsightedly expounded by Pope Leo XIII in be Rerun? Novarion, We want to see greater equality especially in respect of wealth. where the differences are still substantial. -We want, too, a more decentralised society, in which parents and patients exercise choice, but not a choice that depends on money — so we would uphold the right to choose between a Church school or a State school: we would let council tenants buy their houses, as long as the money so obtained was reinvested in new or rehabilitated housing for families who depend on the council for housing.
We reject utterly racial prejudice or discrimination on grounds of colour, creed, class or sex. We believe much more needs to be done if our black and brown fellow citizens are to have a fair chance.
Britain must stay firmly within the European Community and we seek to reform it from within. We should work with our European neighbours to create a fresh initiative towards the Third World, as the new President of France recently suggested.
The Brandt Report must not be allowed to die: some Western governments, including our own, seem to have turned their backs on the plight of the developing countries — an attitude that is selfish. short-sighted and dangerous.
II' only Mrs Thatcher had supported Herr Schmidt. the German Chancellor, at the Venice summit last year. such a new approach might now. be under way.
We believe too that Britain must work within the Western alliance for disarmament. The arms race is escalating on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Yet a unilateralist Britain would have no influence on the great powers who largely determine whether there is a war or peace. We see no argument for Trident. an expensive weapon which could encourage nuclear proliferation: we see every argument for trying to get disarmament negotiations going again.
We must work for peace will our Community partners: walking out, as the Labour Party wants to do, would not only massively increase unemployment it would also disrupt the best hope for advancing a policy of peace and social justice in our troubled world.