A Glorious Revolution?

POLITICIANS OF all parties will be running scared in tomorrow's British elections. There is a sense of occasion heavy upon them--this is the first time in British history that a second general election in a single year has been necessary. But the politicians know that power and leadership is quickly passing out of their hands into those of the trade union leaders. And the goals of the unionists can be achieved no matter which party or combination of parties forms a government after the votes have been counted.

There are three major issues in the campaign: how the government will respond to the trade unions' initiatives; how the government will attempt to distribute the burdens of inflation and depression; and whether Scotland will continue to be an integral part of the United Kingdom. All three issues, however, resolve themselves into a single difficulty--Britain's slow-motion economic collapse since the second world war has made ever-present class tensions the most decisive factor in contemporary British politics. The Scots, meanwhile, want to dissociate themselves from the London government in order to secure North Sea oil profits, which they see as the solution to their economic problems.

Actually, this election will not affect these issues much. Neither of the two largest parties, or for that matter any of the smaller ones, are offering dramatic new policies; Britons face the same "choice" they have had since 1964: Heath or Wilson. Similar as these two sly, unadmirable men have always been, they have never seemed so indistinguishable as now--whichever one is elected will be powerless. The problems Britain faces are certainly not insoluble, but they outrun the imagination and power of any British government--and certainly any possible British prime minister.

Both major parties are pledged to a limited transfer (devolution) of power to an elected Scottish assembly, but neither are willing to grant economic autonomy. Both major parties are pledged to limit the inflationary effect of trade union wage claims by one means or another--the Tories place their trust in legal regulation and the Labourites in a formal but unlegislated "social contract" between the unions and the government. But neither party, once in power, will possess any means short of armed force to carry out its intentions. Both major parties are pledged to halt the staggering deterioration of British living standards--the Tories by fiscal austerity and wage-price controls, the Labourites by withdrawal from the common market and the wealth tax. This tax would produce a sudden increase in the living standards of the majority of the people by confiscating the wealth of the rich. But neither party can do anything about the worldwide pressures that make recovery impossible for an already weakened British economy.

NONETHELESS, the outcome of the elections will make a difference. If Labour wins with a substantial majority, we can expect to see the most plausible effort to effect a genuinely drastic redistribution of wealth ever undertaken in an industrial Western democracy. Labour is proposing a tax of up to 5 per cent a year on aggregates of wealth, about twice the level of Norway (the next highest one in Europe). In actuality the tax will be far heavier than any in Europe, since most European countries limit taxes to a set proportion of income. The 100,000 richest men in Britain could expect to pay more than 100 per cent of their annual income in taxes.

It is unlikely however that Parliament will approve such measures in their present form. The Labour leadership has proposed it only under intense pressure from the party's militant wing. Some party leaders no doubt intend to use the wealth tax as an election ploy--a voluntary wage-control program concealed as an attack on social injustice. Others may be committed to a genuinely new "social contract" between the unions and the government.

This contract represents an agreement to moderate wage demands that Wilson wrung out of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) last month. But some of the largest unions were publicly unenthusiastic about the contract. If elected, Wilson may find himself in a situation similar to the one in which he found himself in 1966, when he was forced to introduce wage controls after a few months in office.

This time around, though, he might not be able to enact controls even if he wanted to. Wilson's appeal rests primarily on his image as the one politician on friendly enough terms with the Union leaders to keep them in check. If Labour is in power, so the argument goes, the unions will not humiliate the government by forcing large wage increases. The Conservatives, on the other hand, will exacerbate the situation the way they did during the coal strike last winter. Wilson's power over the unions, however, has largely disappeared. Not only have the big unionists--like Len Murray, secretary-general of the TUC, Hugh Scanlon of the engineers union and Jack Jones of the Transport Workers--proved that they are the most powerful men in Britain, but most of Wilson's own party is now solidly behind them.

In the last couple of years, Labour has swung swiftly and militantly to the left. Since World War I, Labour party strategy had been to present itself as a political party just like any other party appealing to a broad cross-section of the population and not just to class interests. Herbert Morrison was the custodian of this vision of the parliamentary Labour Party, and since his death more than a decade ago the party has abandoned his position. Once again, Labour represents the working class, and, as far as it is concerned, its appeal to anyone else is purely coincidental and altruisitic.

IT IS NOT surprising, then, that the sudden, much-publicized resurgence of the Liberal party came at the moment that Labour reverted to its pre-war role--for it was the Liberal party whose constituency had largely switched to Labour ranks Under the photogenic leadership of Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals received nearly 20 per cent of the popular vote in the election held last February. But under Britain's system of parliamentary representation they hold only 14 seats in a Parliament of 635. Thus the Liberals' chief hope for the future is proportional representation. Without it they can never hope to be a majority party and form a government on their own. Despite an imaginative approach that places them in between the Conservative and Labour camps and some well-thought-out proposals, the Liberals really have no chance of becoming Britain's majority party within the next five or ten years. Voter loyalty is too strong and the Liberals have yet to prove that a Liberal vote is not a wasted vote. The Liberals, it is estimated, must gain 30 per cent of the popular vote before the "take-off" point is reached where this large share will be realistically reflected in Parliament. If they fail to take off this year, they may be relegated once again to their role as political gadfly.

But the Liberals have another option, one that stands as the official position of the party leadership: coalition with one of the major parties to form a more broadly-based government, in which Thorpe would hold the balance of power. Actually, his position is less attractive since Wilson has ruled out a twenties-style Lib-Lab coalition and therefore Liberal willingness to join a coalition means a willingness to join the Conservatives. If the Liberals are to continue to receive the benefit of protest votes from dissatisfied voters of both parties they must insure that they are not too closely identified with either one of the major parties. For this reason, Thorpe rejected Heath's post-election offer last February to join the Conservatives. "The Liberals do not want a three-party system," one commentator has observed. "They want to replace one of the parties in the present two-party system, but they are divided over which one it should be."

SUCH A MOVE would be eased by the long-overdue withdrawal of Edward Heath as Conservative leader of the Opposition. Heath holds an honored place among the bankrupt political figures of the Western world. William Whitelaw, who did what he could in good faith in Northern Ireland and who appeals to the English sense of fair play, is an attractive replacement for Heath. But it is unlikely Heath will step down unless the election results are disastrous for the Tories. So far he has led a lackluster campaign and the polls put Wilson about 14 per cent ahead. Such polls, however, must be interpreted against the background of Britain's particular electoral system in which the location of swing votes is more important than their number.

It is difficult to see, in any case, why either party would wish to be in power and bear the "responsibility" for the events of the next 12 or 18 months--a period of time which will almost certainly see more hostility in Britain than any time since the General Strike in 1926. Smart politicians of both parties might be content to lean back and let the other fellow bear the brunt of the approaching disasters, then move in on a landslide to pick up the pieces. Perhaps this is part of the reason none of the younger, less tarnished politicians of either party have pressured their shopworn leaders into resigning--Heath or Wilson's last, greatest service to their supporters could be to serve as scapegoats.

INTO THIS complicated brew of motives and counter-motives is thrown the question of Scottish independence. Labour may be denied a majority not by the Conservatives or even the Liberals, but by the various nationalist or regionalist parties, particularly the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP). The SNP holds 18 of the 71 Scottish seats at Westminster and chances are that they will increase this substantial share. The SNP stands for eventual self-government for Scotland, but its most immediate goal is economic independence.

The Scots--like the English--have been oversold on North Sea Oil and confidently expect it to solve all their problems. Certainly it will bring a measure of prosperity to a wilted economy. But oil production will not reach its full potential until 1980, and the Scots as well as the English will need help before then if things continue to deteriorate.

The extraordinary gains of the SNP in the last election have already resulted in several significant moves by the English political parties. The Conservatives have least to lose in Scotland since they control only 21 seats, mostly in rural areas where squirearchical traditions are still strong. The industrial towns of the Lowlands, however, have always been among the safest of safe Labour fiefdoms. Labour needs the 32 Scottish seats it now has to maintain its majority in Parliament, but its concessions to Scottish national feeling came too little and too late. Labour promises about the same as the Conservatives--a consultative assembly with power over aspects of housing, education, and welfare. The Wilson government has moved the Office of Offshore Procurement to Edinburgh and promised to move another 7,000 civil service jobs to that city, but the SNP's supporters are intent on Scottish control of North Sea Oil profits, something neither major party will contemplate at this time. The Scottish Labour Party only approved limited devolution two weeks ago, and then with little grace. One Labour leader bluntly said that he voted for it simply in order to pull his party through this election.

Labour's short-term stake in these Scottish seats is large enough to justify his attitude. Along with Wales (where the nationalist party Plaid Cymru has made significant though much smaller inroads on Labour strength), Scotland is the key to any Labour victory. If it were not for its safe seats in Scotland and Wales, Labour would have lost every general election in Britain since 1950.

This resurgence of nationalist sentiment comes at a bad time for England. While efforts to preserve Scottish and Welsh culture come only just in time to prevent their extinction, it is a vain hope that smaller units of economic and social organization will be able to keep their heads above water any better than large ones in the approaching economic deluge. Unless the Scots are willing to become a sheikdom on the Clyde, a few decades of oil-boom cannot be a substitute for industrial development. Their growing isolationism is reflected in the Labour party's desire to get out of the Common Market. Party leaders feel so strongly about this that they have promised to hold the first binding referendum in British history on the issue if they are elected.

THIS INSISTENCE on withdrawal from the Common Market, along with plans for a wealth tax, are the reasons why trade unions will be able to see their goals--full-scale industrial nationalization and drastic redistribution of wealth--achieved even if a Labour government proves unethusiastic about implementing them. The Labour party has its own share of millionaires and in recent years has become a party with a very large stake in the status quo. But an anti-European Labour government committed to a wealth tax will have an enormous amount of difficulty raising the foreign capital necessary for Britain--an island that cannot live without imports--to finance its balance of payments deficit. American banks recently announced, jointly, that they felt they were fully "loaned out" to Britain, France and Italy. Other international monetary powers may be willing to take up some of the slack for a short while, but a real financing of Britain's 6 billion pound annual deficit could only come from the Arabs, and those ultra-security-conscious investors are hardly likely to invest very heavily in a country whose economic future must seem so unsettling to the capitalist.

So, a Labour government will be faced, sooner or later, with the inability of British industry to obtain international credit. The unions expect that the government will then be forced--at bargain prices--to nationalize almost all of British industry. Once industry is in the hands of the state, the power of the old upper and middle classes to oppose efforts to redistribute wealth will be broken.

The same end will be reached, the unions know, if a Conservative government is elected. Then the scenario will go as follows. Conservative wage controls will be resisted by crippling strikes that will further weaken British industry. A Conservative government will find it much easier than a Labour one, of course, to obtain mountains of foreign credits, but the indulgence of foreign bankers will run out eventually. In order to reduce costs some companies will attempt to lay off workers; meanwhile, other firms will go bust under the impact of tactical strikes and the slump. Nationalization of both kinds of companies will be demanded to save jobs and, given the state of public opinion in Britain today, such demands will be irresistible. Once industry is nationalized, the same kind of redistribution of wealth that would occur under a Labour government could be effected.

SUCH PLANS are plausible, though not foolproof. It is possible that a Conservative government could avoid proviking industrial unrest and so leave the militants stranded on the left. Coupled with massive infusions of foreign capital, such an appeal to British moderation might save British industry. It is possible that the political elements of the Labour party would prove strong enough to blunt the effects of the unionists' plans for redistribution of wealth. Unions might discover that their efforts to bring industry to a halt do not cause so much economic chaos as they expect.

And it is possible that the situation would be solved in an extra-parliamentary way--by coup or civil war.

But militant workers' chances to take control of their society appear stronger in Britain today than in any other advanced industrial nation. Britain's troubles could be the opportunity for a thorough-going reorganization of society in the interests of the working class. Whether this can be achieved is uncertain. The British people will have to take the decision into their own hands--and may find the voting lever an inadequate means to their ends.