Liberal Party (Policy)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 11 July 1977.

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Photo of Mr Charles Morrison Mr Charles Morrison , Devizes 12:00, 11 July 1977

As I knew that it was my hon. Friend's intention to attempt to catch the eye of the Chair later, and as I had a lot of other remarks to make, I felt that I should not concentrate on the aircraft industry. I feel certain that my hon. Friend will expand on that theme when he has the opportunity.

So far as I know, there is no intention on the part of the Liberals to force a moderate manifesto on the Labour Party at the next General Election. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party has acknowledged that, saying: The terms have been agreed to work together, and we have both retained the total independence of our parties from each other in electoral terms and in terms of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister, in effect, said the same at Aberystwyth on 2nd July when he said: I ask the whole movement to unite behind its Labour Government in laying the ground work for the electoral gains which will give Labour a working majority next time. Again, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal Party originally claimed that the pact will get the country through the difficult period ahead, especially the pay negotiations." —[Official Report, 23rd March 1977, Vol. 928, c. 1315–19.] It has not even done that. The right hon. Gentleman may now care to remember that, if there had been a Conservative Government following an April General Election, not only would they have had the authority in coping with the problems of pay stemming from a large majority and massive public support but also would, no doubt, have already set about making reductions in direct taxation, which is one of the first priorities of the next Conservative Government. That alone could by now be acting as an incentive to increase output and moderate wage claims.

Therefore, to my mind, the justifications of the pact are thoroughly spurious and its continuing existence is a nonsense and a contradiction. It will not produce stability it does not control Socialism, and it has not got the country through the pay negotiations—somehing which even this Government would have wanted, with or without the Lib-Lab pact.

There is no doubt, therefore, who has lost as a result of the pact—the British people. Equally, there is no doubt who has gained—the Prime Minister, who has been able to stay a few more months in Downing Street hoping that something will turn up. But, as David Wood pointed out today in The Times: The advantages to the Government are no more than a temporary salvation from a parliamentary crisis. Nothing has turned up and within the period of this Parliament nothing will. The jam tomorrow gets further away, as the Prime Minister emphasised at Aberystwith, when he said: In another five years, we shall be gaining major benefits from our industrial strategy … We want to plan now for the Britain of the 1980s. What about the Utopia which we were told would arrive in the later years of this Socialist Government?

Nevertheless, it is nice to hear that new-found realism by the Prime Minister in place of the former unclouded optimism. Perhaps such becoming modesty should reap its own reward, but it does not. So whenever any part of it has had the opportunity, the electorate has shown its clear opinion that it is time for a change: Woolwich, Workington, Walsall, Stechford, Grimsby, Ashfield and now Saffron Walden, every one a knock-out victory for the Conservative Party and every one a shattering blow to Labour and the Liberals.

Yet I am told that Saffron Walden is considered by some Liberals as a victory —a Pyrrhic victory, I assume. They should remember what King Pyrrhus said: Another such victory, and we are lost. If the Saffron Walden victory were repeated in all Liberal seats, the casualty list, based on the Liberal Party's own assessment of the swing from them to the Conservatives, would read as follows: the hon. Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), Truro (Mr. Penhaligon), Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) and Cornwall, North (Mr. Pardoe), the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe), the right hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson).