Britain's Emerging Center

...The U.S...

...A reading of Politics Is for People shows that Williams and the Social Democrats hold much the same views as American liberals...

...Reviewed by Steven Kelman Author, "Regulating America, Regulating Sweden: A Comparative Study of Occupational Safety and Health Policy" The stagflation plaguing the West since the first opec oil price increases in 1973 has brought about sharp changes in the arguments and prescriptions of the major political organizations-especially in the United States and England, where conservative parties and groups have hardened their positions...

...The policies of Presidents Nixon and Ford, for example, were moderate compared to those of the victorious Rea-ganauts...

...From a good politician's writings one can draw the inspiration to advance certain fundamental values or an insight into governing, but not much in the way of substantive enlightenment about public policy...

...At its least appealing, the search for new programs can fall prey to mere trendiness, to a temptation to exalt newness at the risk of abandoning enduring values simply because they are familiar-something we have certainly seen in America...

...Williams' brand of rethinking, unlike that of many American liberals, clearly has its roots in the socialist tradition...

...She also calls for greater industrial democracy, suggesting that, in addition to its other virtues, it could improve the chances for acceptance of the incomes policies she favors to combat inflation as well as to promote new technologies that workers might otherwise resist...

...While serving in the British government, Williams notes, she concluded that many of the country's problems are institutional...

...It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that within the past year a reaction to that polarization has taken shape in the form of the new Social Democratic Party...

...In fact, she has a number of kind things to say about small firms...

...Her proposals thus target institutions, public and private...

...Her interest in industrial democracy, a topic virtually ignored by American liberals, is similarly born of her roots in socialism...

...Her persistent themes are participation and decentralization...

...But she recognizes that the slowdown in economic growth and a heightened popular resentment against "big government" require fresh responses from the foes of conservativism...

...Her book, written mostly during a semester spent at Harvard after she quit Labor and before the launching of the Social Democratic Party, is not a formal manifesto...

...indeed, the great fear of the true believers around the Presidentelect was that too many Nixon-Ford "retreads" might make their way into the new Administration...

...In concluding, I feel compelled to make a general observation about books by political leaders that sweep over an enormous range of subjects in a relatively small number of pages at the expense of depth-of which Politics Is for People, alas, is typical...

...Like anybody on the Left, Williams is deeply concerned with improving the lot of the disadvantaged...

...Britain's Labor Party, by contrast, mirroring Thatcher's extremism, has moved correspondingly to the Left...

...Democratic Party, having lost electoral strength, has itself drifted to the Right...

...She takes care to remind us that the postwar welfare states of Western Europe and America were enormous political and economic successes, that they achieved widely shared prosperity and anchored democratic institutions throughout Western Europe...

...Ironically, this has produced polarization at a time when the failure of the Prime Minister's programs has reversed the British electorate's turn toward the Tories...

...It does, however, present the outlook of one of the new party's most sympathetic and highly respected figures, who will soon stand herself in a by-election...

...Unlike Labor's Left wing, though, she does not believe that more government control of the economy is a panacea, nor does she adhere to an apocalyptic or conspiratorial world-view...

...At its most appealing, the urge to innovate reflects freedom from dogma that compares favorably with the tendency of many Marxists to adopt a posture hermetically sealed from reality in the face of well-argued neoconserva-tive ideas...

...For that, one still must carefully follow party programs and position papers...

...In general, she would give more power to local governments and would decrease the concentration of industries...

...Dwelling almost exclusively on economic and social service issues, she hardly discusses feminism or the environment, to take two important elements of American liberalism during the past decade...

...The central difference between the two countries has been the opposition's response to stagflation-strengthened conservatism...

...In Britain, well before the Reagan "New Beginning" Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher embraced the anti-inflation program of Milton Friedman, abandoning the less drastic approach of most Tory leaders since World War II...

...In other words, the books that make up this genre tend, ultimately, to be neither fish nor fowl-prompting me to think that, as a rule, politicians writing books ought to stick to memoirs...

...Fully aware of the free market's limitations as a regulator of all human interactions, she regards government as part of the solution rather than part of the problem...

...Moreover, the indications are that should they succeed in maintaining their early momentum, the Social Democrats-who recently forged an alliance with the Liberal Party and won their first by-election-may be able to form Britain's next government in 1984...

...One element that further distinguishes liberalism from ideologies on the far Left in these conservative times is the inclination to rethink traditional positions and come up with new approaches to the "new problems" confronting us...

...She recommends that social services be made less bureaucratic, that volunteerism be encouraged, and that the media be used to bring together people with problems and members of the community who wish to help out...

...That this has a strong chance of happening today is a measure of the frustration with the way British politics and society are proceeding: Thatcher's nostrums have only exacerbated the country's woes, while the most charitable thing one can say of the solutions offered by Labor's increasingly influential Left wing is that the cure would likely be worse than the disease...

...Williams' is very much a "rethinking" book in the better sense of the word...

...Shirley Williams, a former Labor Party leader and Cabinet minister, and the author of Politics Is for People, is oneof the new group's primary spokesmen...

...She worries about unemployment, wants to preserve the welfare state and seeks to encourage more mass participation in the political system...

...A two-party system as long-established as England's does not break down easily (the last time it did so was around World War I, when a working class shift to Labor eclipsed the Liberal Party...