IS A Labour lash-up with the Lib-Dems the way to get the Tories out of office?
Egged on by Marxism Today, key thinkers on Labour's right have advocated a pact for years. Now Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown is seemingly opening the door.
After floating the idea in a keynote speech just days after April's general election, Ashdown saw 'working with eople of all parties and none become official policy at his party's conference in Harrosate resoluti TresolTOn carried against fierce opposition from MP's Alan Beith and Liz Lynne and campaign mastermind Des Wilson, and many of the rank and file. Its passage represents a potentially crucial for the New Coalitionists.
Green light
With John Smith's New Paths to Victory leadership election manifesto explicitly inviting non-Labour contributions to discussions on social policy, the green light for 'dialogue has been signalled in both camps. Many would go further.
Two articles from Calum Macdonald, Labour MP for the Western Isles (Fabian Review, May 1992 and New Statesman & Society, 11 September 1992) explicitly call for coalition.
His NSS piece was written in collaboration with maverick Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, who in 1988 openly Paddy Ashdown - don't let him screw the labour movement too flirted with the Greens when they looked on the verge of an electoral breakthrough.
Yet significantly, it backpedals on positions advanced for the smaller but more influential Fabian audience.
Macdonald demands Labour backing for proportional representation by the year end as a platform for joint campaigning between the two parties.
This experience could lead to local electoral agreements, with Labour and Liberal activists coming together behind single candidates standing on a common reform platform [emphasis added] in around 50 seats, resulting in a 'reformist, centre-left' - and presumably coalition - government.
What backbencher Macdonald counsels openly, many in the shadow cabinet are undoubtedly saying privately. Superficially, this quick fix may even tempt some serious socialists. They should think twice.
Far left publications Hands up if you hate the Liberals! generally dismiss contemporary Liberalism with trite cliches such as 'the bosses Bteam', which are true but scarcely analytically trenchant.
Based on a philosophical tradition stretching back over 200 years, the party has over 100,000 paid-up members and 18 per cent electoral support. Liberalism will obviously not evaporate overnight in any transition to socialism.
Furthermore, a pincer movement comprised of the effects of Kinnockism on Labour and the permeation of Labour right ideas into Liberalism via the Social Democratic Party split of 1982 has blurred the programmatic edges considerably. Some Liberal Democrat manifesto Promises are well to Labour's Macdonald makes much of this 'overlap', wrongly concluding: 'Emerging consensus between the two parties of the progressive left is part of a long term trend!
Symptom
It is rather a symptom of Labour's current ideological confusion, which the left must overcome by arguing for a socialist clarification.
This is something Macdonald plainly dreads. In NSS, he argues: 'The Labour Party has rescued itself from the depths of the early eighties and we will not relinquish the centre-left ground of British politicsagain!
A deal with the Liberal Democrats constitutes an insurance policy against socialist ideas returning to the mainstream political agenda. However innocuous or commonsense the siren calls for a 50 seat deal appear, socialists must firmly oppose them.
Racists
There are other arguments against. Liberalism's cadre is extraordinarily heterogenous, ranging from self-perceived radicals to outright reactionaries of the calibre of MP David Alton and the notoriously racist group running Tower Hamlets council.
Its electoral backing - which in any case fell by five percentage points in the last election -includes a substantial tactical voter element, with as many anti-Labour as anti-Conservative supporters.
Anti-Labour
The Liberal probably couldn't even deliver alf its current base in a pact with Labour; radical policies could win over most of those elements anyway.
That Labour secured almost twice the Liberal Democrat vote is testimony to its enduring status as a class-based mass party, a standing the Liberal Democrats can never hope to emulate.
The difference largely lies in Labour's organic link with the unions, a salutary warning for those who would sever it.
Yet it is noticeable that it is precisely those politicians the furthest from Labour's working class base that are the most favourable to a pact with Paddy.