main aim in the election is to stop Labour from forming a government. And they are receiving support in the top levels of the labour movement as TUC's chairperson Frank Chapple's support for one of their candidates shows.
At the very first Alliance press David Steel Roy Jenkins, respectively the leader of the campaign prime minister-designate chose to make Labour its main target in presenting its policies.
They summarised their policy differences Labour as being: * a moderate reflationary package with the objective of reducing unemployment to two million policy whilst against Trident, like the Tories they are for keeping cruise if the Geneva negotiations are unsuccessful, but they are for a dual key with the Pentagon *for maintaining British internationa alliance. particular with the EEC and NATO However these policies will be a secondary matter for many of those who vote for the Alliance. It is more their appeal as a above the vested interests of labour and capital Thatcher's rapacious drive for profit and repelled by the indecision and vacillation of the labour leadership.
It is this question which is at the centre of a by Vernon Bogdanor* which examines the impact of the SDP/Liberal Alliance on Bogdanor traces out the developwith The outcome was that the Party adopted radical policies withdrawal from the EEC, unilateral disarmament as well as opposition to incomes policy. These patible with acting as a serious' party of government upholding the capitalist status quo. The success of the reforms (reselection of MPs and election of the party leader) meant that the leadership of the party could be sanctioned policies through.
The Council for Democracy formed itself as a faction and prepared its break from a party that they were convinced would never again offer them the fruits of governmental office. Roy Jenkins and David Steel — united against Labour such were incomcommitted constitutional not carrying these Social put forward ms views was that the SDP points to three different perspectives of the SDP and the Alliance which he categorises as Grimmondite, Owenite power led through a recreation of the on Labour agreement that was concludgeneral election of 1910, but one that would find modern shape in a single party consisting of Liberals and the right wing of the Labour Party. The ments of the left.' basis on which Grimond originally after their third consecutive election by until electoral reform can be won. The would then hope to emerge in its own right as the inheritor of the Gaitskell and Crosland tradition, but not through reforming the Labou Party, but through its destruction.
Bogdanor notes that this strategy premise Grimond's and 'if this view proves to 1974. have underestimated the recuperative possibilities of the Labour Party' then •disunity on the left (would make) for long periods of Conservative rule, interrupted only by short-lived governboth the Parliamentary Labour Part! and in the trade unions. Steel revealed in an interview on ITV's Weekend World that the suggestion of coalition in the event of a hung parliament had been made in a roundabout fashion both Michael Foot and Dennis Healey.
Others have not been SU Terry Duffy suffered one of his few defeats at this year's Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers national committee when he motivated the necessity of adopting the referendum (stay in) position on the Common Market for his union and for the Labour Party. Otherwise, he said, it would be impossible to work with the Pessimistic Unfortunately the left of the labour movement, instead of nailing these sentiments in the pre-election period when it counts, have let them go by with the assertion that it is 'pessimistic' to talk about a bung parliament.
But hung parliament or not, after the election the debate will continu as to how Labour should relate to the so-called 'middle ground' dominated by the SDP-Liberal Alliance. This vil apply whether the Alliance is sec cessful in terms of seats or not stace i is likely that the Alliance vote phe others will equal exceed the previous record of 25 per cent of votes cast neither for Tories or Laboer Already this debate has beea is. itiated on the left by Marxism Today. who have sponsored a collection of essays on the necessity of the com struction by the labour movement of the broadest possible set of alliances This reflects a project expounded a greater length by Dave Cook in the