AFTER the Bermondsey by-election Keith Waterhouse wrote in the Daily Mirror that what was needed by the Labour Party was "a candidate in a suit'. Ossie O'Brien fulfilled this qualification: but what else can be learnt from the Darlington victory?
In the first place O'Brien did not have the albatross of the Labour leadership's condemnation hanging around his neck. On the contrary, while O'Brien himself was a 'man above factions' the Labour leadership rushed to embrace him.
Found Forces The Trade Union Campaign for a Labour Victory found the forces that were lacking in Bermonasty. But abart trom this it must be that the Darlington campaign was better than that run for Tatchell.
Unemployment was made the centre of the by-election campaign, not through mass action by the Shildon workers who marched with thousands of their through the town.
Secondly, O'Brien had no inhibitions about declaring himself determined attack was made on the SDP, canvassers voters who had early on in the election campaign declared for the SDP and convincing them that only Labour could beat the Tories.
Fanned Flames But the result has also fanned the flames of a debate which refuses to go away - that of coalition. The 1.3 per cent swing from Tories to Labour in Darlington would mean on a national basis the Tories, Labour, would not have an overall majority in the House of Commons.
The upturn in the economy hailed by the CBI this week will probably not result in a decrease in unemolovment but will also lead to an upturn of industrial struggle (the employers are already preparing for this in the car industry with the Halewood and Cowley).
This means that the longer the Tories go on without an election the Labour will make, with the probability that no one party will emerge with an overall majority in Parliament.
The Labour right have a two-fold response to this. Increasingly the National Economic Assessment will be rolled out to show that only Labour can control the unions. At the same time the NEA opens up the way to incomes policy which would be the precondition of any governmenta pact with the Alliance.
Incomes Policy Under these conditions it would be fatal for those on the left not to continue to fight both in the Labour Party and the forthcoming union conferences, to make sure that incomes policy is not smuggled through the back door. both to detence of living standards and against coalitionism. Dennis Skinner's demand for the national executive to quivocally against unilateral disarmament, should be fought for in every labour manifesto is drawn up.
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week of December.
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