David Lipsey
LETTER FROM BRITAIN:
THE FUTURE OF LABOR
The birth of the first major new political party in Britain
for three-quarters of a century, the Social Democratic Party, seems
to have caused quite as big a stir among American liberals as in pro–
gressive British opinion . Off the East Coast flights into Heathrow
have stepped eager American journalists and academics like big–
game hunters seeking the spoor of some fabled beast. The latest gos–
sip about the SDP's progress and prospects was the hottest property
the informed Englishman could offer his transatlantic interlocutor.
In part this is no more than the natural human curiosity about some–
thing new . And it is reinforced by the strong ties of friendship that
exist between the SDP' s leading figures and the U. S. Roy Jenkins ·
(the new party's leader), Shirley Williams, and David Owen are
among the best-known British politicians in the States; while
younger SDP members of Parliament, such as Tom McNally (for–
mer aide to Jim Callaghan, the ex-leader of the Labor Party) and
John Roper (the SDP's leading foreign affairs specialist) have a deep
knowledge of and affection for the U. S . David Marquand and
Roderick MacFarquhar, both former MPs yet active intellectual fig–
ures in the new party, are well known in American academic circles.
But there is, I think, one other important factor. For American liber–
als, there has been something rather uncomfortable about the
leftward drift of the Labor Party.
If,
therefore, the Social Democrats
could displace it as the second party of the English system, a psycho–
logical burden would be lifted from the shoulders of our American
observers.
Of the thirty British MPs who joined the Social Democratic
Party on or since its launch, all but one were formerly Labor MPs.
This is not exactly a major split; after all, eight Labor MPs remain
in the Labor Party for everyone who defected. But it is true that one
should look first for the origins of the new party to the tensions in the
Labor Party itself.
It
may not have seemed so at the time, but the origins of
Labor's split were contained in its very roots.
It
was, from the first,
an alliance between intellectual socialist reformers and trade
