The British Voter-III Liberals: The Second Party?:

...These parties favor as little government ownership or control as is necessary to facilitate their economic objectives of a rising standard of living (increased productivity) and full employment...

...In Australia after World War II, the Communists controlled a majority of the unions affiliated to the Australian Council of Trades Unions...

...The large mass street demonstrations mobilized by the CND have been of considerable psychological assistance to the left within the Labor party since such activities bolster the claim that a radical foreign policy might gain rather than lose votes...

...Such people generally feel that a progressive, non-socialist, non-trade unionist party, much like the Northern Democrats in America, could become the majority party and could enact and administer the long-term reforms needed to modify Britain's class structure...

...If the Gaitskellites win, they will be strong enough to stamp their image on the party—and there will no longer be any need for the Liberal Party...

...Liberalism usually remains marginal to these two major electoral forces...

...The rise in Liberal strength in by-elections and in public opinion surveys conducted when there is no immediate forthcoming general election, and the party's subsequent loss of support as a national election nears, point up the dangers involved in drawing conclusions about enduring political trends from indicators of "off-year" sentiment...

...Increased concern over prospects of a nuclear war has been reflected most directly in Britain in the growing strength of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a movement which began with a small group of pacifists, young left-wing socialists, churchmen and the like, and has now attained remarkable support...

...access to the members and to local party leaders is largely in their hands...

...In the 1959 general election, the Liberals lost some seats which they had won in by-elections in preceding years, and their vote declined heavily in other areas where they had finished a good second before...

...Often in predominantly one-party constituencies, particularly in by-elections, the Liberals devote more campaign energy and often put up a more attractive candidate than does the second largest party, and the voter can feel free to "waste his vote" since the outcome is almost certain...

...Thus it has some limited success among young and highly skilled workers whose links to the working class are declining and who, by virtue of their higher class status and education, are not likely to adhere to traditional socialist principles...

...the Communists and Trotskyists have been increasing their number of trade union positions...

...It is obviously easier for a Laborite or Conservative to vote Liberal than to go over to the other side...

...But the hope for an effective British two-party system still remains with the Labor party rather than with a revived Liberal party...

...In England, however, the policy leadership held elsewhere by the party parliamentarians is countered by the trade union leaders...

...By contrast, the socialist parties of Austria, Germany and Switzerland have officially dropped their Marxist traditions and have openly accepted the need to maintain private ownership—not as a lesser evil, but as a positive good in preserving political democracy...

...As in other countries, Communist trade unionists, allied with left-wing socialists and a core group of relatively non-political aggressive militants, have used trade union economic and grievance issues to win local union offices and, in some cases, national positions...

...In constituencies where either the Laborites or the Conservatives are certain to win, voters feel much freer to vote Liberal than in districts which might shift...

...Recently a Gallup poll added further evidence concerning the strength of traditional loyalties when it asked how voters would choose among a "Conservative, a Liberal-Labour coalition candidate, and a left-wing candidate...

...These sentiments, combined with the numerical predominance of the working class in Britain, will prevent the Liberal party—or possibly even a Liberal coalition with Labor's right wing—from becoming the second party...

...The Liberals of Finland and Italy do even less well, while only those of Sweden and Switzerland have been able to get more than one-fifth of the total vote...

...This shift to a more aggressive stance within the trade union movement has its inevitable ramifications in the party because most of the trade unions are directly affiliated with the Labor party and cast the large majority of the votes at Labor party conferences...

...But if one can be doubtful about a Liberal revival for general reasons, there can be little doubt that the Labor party has lost some support in the past few months...

...And if the Liberal gains in by-elections do not necessarily presage a return of Liberals to the position of the second party, they do indicate that Labor, after declining in support in three national elections, has still not found the road to recovery...

...After the Labor party conference in October, at which the motion favoring unilateral nuclear disarmament was passed by the trade union delegates, the Gallup poll showed that Labor had declined to its lowest level of support in the history of polling in Britain...

...THE PERPETUATION of an obsolete traditionalist set of social and economic doctrines, and the direct control over party convention policy by affiliated trade unions, has for some time weakened Labor among the population as a whole...

...According to the most recent Gallup poll (December 1960) the Liberals are backed by 11.5 per cent of the total electorate, their highest level of support since July 1959—but it should be noted that two Gallup polls in 1958 reported that 15 per cent preferred the Liberals...

...And although they have been somewhat more successful recently in winning over Laborites, their success has not been with the dominant mass of Labor supporters, such as trade union workers in large industries and mines...

...but in the British election system such a party is effectively excluded from Parliament, and hence also from receiving its "true" popular support...

...By Seymour Martin Lipset The history OF two-party politics teaches us that opposition parties normally come back to power through the play of forces associated with the "swing of the pendulum...

...It is obviously not beyond the realm of possibility that such an outcome will result from the contemporary conflicts and confusions within the British left...

...The inability of the Liberals to win Parliamentary seats is pointed up by the fact that they seem better able to gain votes in predominantly one-party constituencies than in marginal districts...

...In Britain—and other parliamentary countries—the political system makes it easier for smaller parties to come to power than in the United States, because a party which has regional strength can hope to elect a number of Members of Parliament...

...But in fact the name does matter, and it is essential for the viability of two-party politics in Britain that the pragmatic left keep control of the Labor party...

...The continued electoral reverses and internal party controversies make many in Britain, both inside and outside the Labor party, despair of the possibility that the party will ever return to power as long as it remains directly linked to the trade unions and continues to keep the socialist and working-class symbolism developed when both unions and party were weak, struggling institutions...

...But more important is that the continued existence of a Conservative Government, viewed by the more class-conscious and hence more active unionists as an ally of the employers, has enabled the more militant, often Communist, trade union activists to get support among workers as the best spokesmen for aggressive local bargaining policies...

...The Labor leadership has, in fact, divided into a Gaitskell group, which accepts the principle that socialist objectives of economic and political democracy can best be accomplished with a limited amount of state intervention, and another group which sees the party as the vehicle of a march toward complete socialized society...

...Here Lipset, Professor of Sociology at the University of California and now Visiting Ford Research Professor of Political Science at Yale, examines the future of the Liberals as the major opposition party...

...Writing in the December issue of Commentary, David Marquand, a British political journalist for the Manchester Guardian, categorically predicts this outcome: "If the left [wing of the Labor party] wins, the right will for all practical purposes be forced out of the party—into alliance with the Liberals...

...In England itself, public opinion poll data suggest that the dominant support for the Liberal party comes from relatively well-educated people—professionals and university students plus some others—who either have or aspire to middle-class status...

...Although there are obvious limitations to use of such data as I discussed above, it is impossible to ignore the implications of the Gallup surveys which estimate the British electorate's preference as of December as 46 per cent Tory, 40.5 per cent Labor, and 13.5 per cent Liberal...

...In the past few months the renewed strength of the left at the conferences of both the Trades Union Congress and the Labor party has meant a further drastic decline in the party's electoral strength...

...The moderate party might be called either 'Liberal' or 'Labor,' depending on circumstances...

...The same pattern shows up in the Belgian strikes...

...There will be a small extremist party opposed to NATO and advocating old-style nationalization...

...The Liberals probably also appeal to the marginal voters associated with both major parties—those less committed to their traditional party, who might even shift to the rival party under changed circumstances...

...The question is, therefore, whether the Liberals will continue to gain in strength and supplant the Labor party as the major opposition party in British politics...

...In the past, particularly when Labor was moving to power or when it held national office (as it did from 1940 to 1951) either in coalition or as a majority government, the majority of the trade union leaders supported the policies of the Parliamentary party...

...At the moment it would seem as if England is in for at least another Conservative decade...

...The growing interrelated strength of left-wing domestic and international sentiment has effectively prevented the Labor party from following the same pattern as the other European socialist parties...

...Thus in the one marginal constituency pf the six contested on November 16, Bolton East, where the Liberals had their strongest candidate and organization, they did little better than in 1951, the last time they contested the district...

...But the main bulk of the Conservative vote comes from traditional Tory workers, residents of small towns and rural areas, practicing Anglicans, small business people and the well-to-do...

...In either case, the end result will be the same...

...They were able to do this in spite of the fact that there is considerable evidence from public opinion surveys that the policies of the CND do not have much support among the general population...

...Consequently, the renewed current strength of the Liberals and the split within Labor means that the Tories may rule the country for a long time to come...

...The CND has attracted many from the extreme left who are able and experienced organizers, and who have helped change what began as a more or less amateur movement into an effective mass political instrument...

...Observers of the British scene have speculated during the last few years whether the Liberals, who were replaced as the second largest party during the 1920s, might return to that position in the 1960s...

...The absence of a serious opposition is obviously a misfortune for British political life...

...Labor's continued weakness seems strongly related to the disunity exhibited by the party...

...We would therefore expect that, after what might be a considerable time out of power, the Labor party would once again be the majority party in Britain...

...Elections are thus constituency elections: If a party can succeed in appealing to the kind of people who are a majority in a fair number of constituencies, it can elect a sizable group to Parliament long before it is an effective second party or a potential alternative government on a national scale...

...This may now be happening, for in the "little general election" of November 16 last year the Liberals finished second to the victorious Tories in four out of six contested seats...

...Answers about behavior in hypothetical future situations are notoriously unreliable predictors of subsequent action, but these answers do indicate the reluctance of the party loyalists to vote even for an alliance with the middle-class liberals...

...A million votes shifted from the right to the left mostly as a result of this change in leadership...

...Its last march from Aldermaston, the leading British atomic energy research center, to Trafalgar Square wound up with a demonstration of over 150,000 people...

...This has been facilitated in part by an accident of history—the death within a single year of two of the General Secretaries of the Transport and General Workers Union, the largest single union in England, which had been a bulwark of right-wing Labor under Ernest Bevin and his successors, Arthur Deakin and A. E. Tiffin...

...Most recently, however, there has been a significant growth in left-wing support within the trade unions...

...this is in fact the principal reason given by those voters who admit moving away...

...When socialist parties first formed in various parliamentary countries at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, they were considerably aided by the existence of relatively homogeneous working-class areas in large cities, and by the existence of industrial or mining communities...

...The answer hinges on two essential matters—the nature of the British election system, and the nature of the current split in the Labor party...

...In two previous articles—"Must the Tories Always Win...

...Following the death of the latter two leaders in 1955, their successor, Frank Cousins, a man much more disposed to taking militant trade union positions, led his union to support left-wing proposals at the Trade Union Congress and Labor party conventions...

...This sentiment is particularly strong among Liberals and many non-office-holding left-Tory intellectuals...

...The British Labor party is unique among these parties in having trade unions directly affiliated to it—unions which cast a majority of the votes at party conventions—whereas the other socialist party conventions are controlled by representatives of individual party members...

...What preserves Labor as Britain's second party is unwavering electoral loyalty from the bulk of the manual workers who are more committed to the Labor party than to any given set of policies...

...NL, November 7) and "Sex, Age and Education" (NL, November 21)—Seymour Martin Lipset dealt with the attitudes of the British voter toward the Conservative and Labor parties...

...In the past few years the growing concern with the destructive implications of a nuclear war has seemingly strengthened the position of the left wing...

...The disunity within the Labor party is, of course, a product of the curious fact that it is almost alone among the major social democratic parties of the Western world in retaining an effective left wing, a faction which has gained support within party conferences over the past few years...

...Conversely, Liberals seem to appeal also to some white-collar workers who do not want to identify with Labor but who have a "liberal" attitude on welfare state issues...

...The former have the advantage of traditionalism, including religious faith, the latter of support from the workers who usually form the largest single class...

...the Tory vote declined by about five per cent, the Labor vote fell by about seven per cent and the Liberal vote increased by both these amounts...

...The greater support for Communist or radical leadership in trade unions than in party politics has actually occurred in many countries...

...The leader of the party, Jo Grimond, for example, sits for a constituency which includes the outer islands of Scotland, about as far away from the center of British life as it is possible to get...

...Thus the Liberal-parties of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Norway, Israel, Denmark and Austria all fluctuate somewhere between 8 and 15 per cent of the vote...

...The presence of two Labor parties—one having a majority in the party conference, the backing of trade unions containing a majority of those affiliated to the Trades Union Congress, and one-third of the MP's, the other having the Parliamentary party leadership, two-thirds of the MP's, the majority of the individual party members as represented in the conference, and the overwhelming majority of Labor voters as reflected in public opinion surveys—has led many to view Labor as no longer an effective alternative government...

...Dissident Labor groups of the 1930s, like the Macdonaldite National Labor party, the Maxton ILP, the Strachey-Bevan-Mosley New party, or the Cripps Socialist League, never succeeded in attracting more than a fraction of the traditional Labor support, no matter how prominent their leaders or seemingly attractive their policies...

...More Labor supporters (39 per cent) said they would vote for the "left wing" than for Liberal-Labor (33 per cent), although Gallup polls have shown that Labor supporters overwhelmingly back the right wing of the party on various specific issues...

...It is obvious that the strength of political extremists in the leadership of trade unions need have little relation to the actual political opinions of union members...

...There is, however, one major exception to the above rule: A third party may take over the role of the opposition...

...The ecological class distribution which made the rise of labor and socialist parties possible would seem, however, to operate today against the re-emergence of the Liberal party as a major force in Britain...

...Whether the Labor party can remake itself in this decade and become effective enough to take over as the dominant party for some time thereafter remains to be seen...

...A Labour Government must defend as true Socialism policies which have very little to do with it...

...But the British Labor party is vulnerable to this strength unlike the other European socialist parties, because union leaders chosen for their militancy in fighting employers can cast votes on behalf of their total membership for political policies at Labor party conferences...

...The Scandinavian and the Dutch socialist parties dropped many of the traditional socialist doctrines even earlier than those in the German-speaking nations...

...This means in practice that the elected parliamentary officials of a party have a great deal of influence on party policy both at conventions and elsewhere...

...In almost all European countries, the Liberals are much weaker than the conservative and leftist parties...

...The important question is how long it takes to come into existence...

...The few districts which continue to elect Liberals lie in outlying sections of the country, largely in Wales and Scotland, and represent the last remnants of the most traditional backing of the old Liberal party, not current converts...

...In the United States at one point the Communists controlled unions containing between one-quarter and one-third of the membership of the CIO, and when John L. Lewis turned hostile to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940—much as Frank Cousins now fights Hugh Gaitskell—he and the Communists temporarily weakened the support which that organization gave to the Democrats in the Presidential elections...

...In November only about one-fifth of the Labor supporters thought their party would win the next general election...

...But the name does not matter...

...For as Richard Crossman, now a leader of the dogmatic left, once pointed out effectively: "A democratic party can very rarely be persuaded to give up one of its central principles, and can never afford to scrap its central myth...

...Finally, it should be noted that in addition to the specific factors in the British social and political structure which make a real Liberal revival unlikely, Liberalism as a political force seems destined to remain a small minority movement almost everywhere in Europe...

...For example, in the United States shortly after the formation of Henry Wallace's third party in 1948, a pro-Wallace American Labor party candidate won a Congressional by-election in the Bronx...

...It would be too simple, however, to blame all of the shift solely on Cousins, since there has been backing for more radical policies by other unions as well...

...In countries with some form of proportional representation, weak Liberal parties can still secure parliamentary representation and play a role in coalition politics...

...Conservatives must defend free enterprise even when they are actually introducing state planning...

...After the TUC conference in September, at which some left-wing foreign policy motions were passed, the Gallup poll reported that sympathy for the Labor party was reduced among a significant number of people...

...A large segment of the British Labor party, particularly the leadership of some trade union affiliates, has stood outside of these moves to the right...

...The Liberal party's renewed strength in the recent by-elections, therefore, does not necessarily mean that the Liberals are moving into a position from which they can strongly contest the next election, and thus seriously threaten Labor's position as one of the two major parties...

...Contemporary Liberalism is supported by groups which are essentially a minority in almost every constituency, and the party is consequently unable to convert sizable national sympathy among the electors into a significant bloc of Parliamentary seats...

...There is little evidence that the Liberals have been able to invade the ranks of the Tory manual workers who provide one out of every two Conservative party votes...

...For voters then are able to express their sentiments in an "irresponsible" fashion, and third parties are often a good and easy outlet for their dissatisfactions...

...and a larger, more moderate, force, committed to NATO and with a more empirical foreign policy...