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Social Democracy in Europe: a Comparative Examination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Roger Morgan
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Extract

DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITISH POLITICS BETWEEN JULY AND NOVember 1981 - Roy Jenkins's near-win in the Warrington byelection, the capture of Croydon North-West by the Liberal/SDP Alliance and Shirley Williams's triumph in Crosby - strongly suggest that the British party-system may never be the same again. Although it was possible to argue that the Warrington result reflected no more than the impact of a famous candidate on a situation of public hostility towards the two major parties in a working-class constituency, the Croydon result, which gave victory to a Liberal candidate with a long record of earlier failures, and which gave the Alliance 40 per cent of the votes in a seat where the Liberal Party's organization had been almost as non-existent as the SDP's, cannot be dismissed so easily. These by-election results, together with an impressive run of local election successes for the Alliance, and continuing evidence from the opinion polls, strongly suggest that British politics, as the SDP's leaders have proclaimed, must be entering a new phase.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1982 , pp. 22 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1982

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References

1 Crosland, Anthony, social Democracy in Europe, Fabian Tract 438, London, Fabian Society, 1975.Google Scholar

2 Marquand, David, Russet‐Coated Captains: the Challenge of Social Democracy, Open Forum Series, No. 5, London, Social Democratic Party, 1981, p. 4.Google Scholar

3 Crosland, op. cit., especially pp. 1, 10, 12.

4 Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875). For background see Morgan, Roger, The German Social Democrats and the First International, Cambridge, 1965,Google Scholar and the classic study by Rosenberg, Arthur, Democracy and Socialism: a Contribution to the Political History of the last 150 years, London, 1939.Google Scholar

5 See Joll, James, The Second Interational, London, 1955 Google Scholar

6 Russell, Bertrand, German Social Democracy, London 1896 Google Scholar, New Edition 1965.

7 Crosland, op. cit., p. 3 stresses the social democratic commitment to pursue social justice and equality by means of a mixed economy and ‘liberty, democracy and the rule of law’. An excellent comparative survey is given in Paterson, William E. and Thomas, Alastair H., eds., Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe, London 1977 Google Scholar

8 The effects of economic recession on social democratic parties, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, are discussed in articles in Le Monde Diplomatique, September 1981, pp. 9–14.

9 Policies adopted at the Brighton party conference, September‐October, 1981

10 TV interview with Brian Walden, Weekend World, 4 October 1981, transcript (copyright London Weekend Television) p. 211.

11 SDP, Draft Constitution of the Social Democratic Party (London 1981), especially chapter V. Preliminary indications of SDP policy attitudes emerged during the party's conference in Perth, Bradford and London on 5–9 October 1981.

12 A book now in progress on European Socialist and Social Democratic Parties and the Policy Issues of the 1980s (working title), by Giles and Lisanne Radice (for the European Centre for Political Studies) will provide a detailed assessment of the subject.

13 Press conference of 24 September 1981 (Le Monde, 26 September). See also David Watt, ‘Mitterand and the British Left: an Entente that Never Was’, The Times, 11 September 1981.

14 See SDP Discussion Paper 7, Economic Policy, by John Horam, MP, and reports of London conference debates, The Times, 9 and 10 October 1981.

15 See Kennet, Wayland and Young, Elizabeth, Neither Red nor Dead: the cases for Disarmament, Open Forum series, No. 2 London, SDP, 1981.Google Scholar

16 See SDP Discussion Paper 2, Foreign Affairs and Defence, by David Stephen. For a detailed statement of social democratic policies for the Community see Gerhard Kirsch and Raimund Seidelmann, eds., Eurosozialismus, Die demokratische Alternative, Stuttgart, 1979.

17 A sceptical but fair account is given by Ian Bradley, Breaking the Mould? The Birth and Prospects of the Social Democratic Party, Oxford 1981.