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For the government (a Labor one!), this confirmed that the
unions were dominated by ruthless and politically motivated men.
Communications broke down; the institutional stability, based on
union support for the party leadership, was lost. So, when the gov–
ernment was defeated in the May 1979 general election, the unions
had no desire to make excuses for it. Instead they sided with the Left
and its fundamentalist critique.
Only one element of the party's institutional stability was still
intact-the practical independence of its members of Parliament.
The MPs, with their natural emphasis on the business of being
elected and reelected, retained that independence; they were more
oriented to the electorate at large, and thus were a bulwark against
the ideologically motivated Left, whose eyes were solely on the party.
The new Left perceived this fact more clearly than the Right. In
the wake of 1979, they mounted an institutional coup, deliberately
designed to destroy this independence. It fell into two phases. First,
in 1980, the party voted that every member of Parliament should,
between every election, face "reselection." That is to say, he had to
appear before his local constituency general management commit–
tee, the small group of activists who ran the local party, for re–
endorsement. The result was that, if the MPs stepped out of line,
they could be dumped. And in a number of instances, right-wing
Labor MPs have been disowned as candidates. But more often the
threat worked the oracle; the MP trimmed his vote to suit his ruling
party caucus. Then in stage two of the coup, in January 1981, the
MPs lost another crucial right-to choose the party's leader and
thus, by implication, its candidate for prime minister. In the future,
the party leader would be chosen by a joint convention in which
MPs would be in a minority. The unions, and local activists, would
finally decide who would lead. And the first time the new system was
used, Tony Benn, the Left candidate, came within a whisker of beat–
ing Denis Healey for the party's deputy leadership, though Healey
had the support of three out of four Labor MPs.
It
was the decision to change the system whereby MPs elected
the party leader that provided the Social Democrats with the
causus
belli
to make their break. But even when the break came it was not
decisive. To a large extent, the old emotional loyalties have endured.
Healey, the right-wing shadow Treasury spokesman Peter Shore,
another stalwart (though nationalistic) right winger, and the great
bulk of Labor MPs adamantly refused to join.
