Party ‘a gamble’

Press, 27 March 1981, Page 5

Party ‘a gamble’

NZPA-Reuter London Britain’s first new national political party in 80 .years, portrayed by its leaders as a last chance for a declining Britain, was formally launched yesterday at a breakfast-time news conference.

The Social Democratic Party aims to seize the middle ground of British politics from the ruling Conservative and Opposition Labour parties by the next General Election, due in 1984.

“What is being attempted today is a gamble, of course.” one of its four founder-members, a former Labour Cabinet Minister, Shirley Williams, wrote in “The Times” yesterday. “Yet if that gamble is not attempted, failure for the country is probable.”

“To drift into extremism with the Labour Party would be to risk the destruction of Parliamentary democracy. To cling tenaciously to the harsh and mutually contradictory doctrines of the Conservative Government is u to risk the destruction of much of British industry and to tear our divided but so far orderly society apart.”

The new party was founded by four former Cabinet Ministers — Roy Jenkins, Dr David Owen, William Rodgers and Mrs Williams - from the Right-wing of the Labour Party.

With 14 members of Parliament, it is already the third biggest in the 635-seat House of Commons where the Conservatives have 336 members, Labour 254 and the Liberals 11.

Of its members, 13 defected from Labour and one from the Conservatives, although rumours spread in Parliament yesterday of more possible Conservative defections.

The organisers, who expected thousands of people to join the new party yesterday, will publish their policy statement today. It is expected to include a commitment to the European Common Market, to a mixed economy and to Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Firm policies will not be set until a party convention can be held. Opinion polls have said the new party could win the next election, particularly if it forms an electoral alliance with the Liberals. But polls held so far ahead of an election have a notoriously bad record.

The launching of the new party was greeted yesterday by sniping from the Left and Centre and silence from the Conservative Right.

A prominent Liberal member of Parliament, Cyril Smith, said there was room for only one centre party, the Liberals. “That is why I urged the Liberals to strangle at birth any fourth party,” he told a rally. The Leftist Tribune group of the Labour Party said the new party was not a new departure in British politics but “an attempt to salvage old, worn-out and rejected policies which were tried and have failed over the last 30 years.”