the last election donated money to both the Conservative Party and the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
Their common goal however was explained clearly by Wilkins of Beecham, when he stated to the Financial Times on 4 October, 'you have to be realistic and recognise that the Conservatives will not be in power for ever' and therefore it was necessary to ensure we don't get back to violent swings of policy?
More bluntly put this policy means that Labour should not be allowed back into office — or at least not allowed into office without market coalition partners David Owen is preparing.
As for the SDP itself it has a more precise and smaller band of supporters the overall representation' industry network which we have looked at in previous issues of Socialist Action. At its foundation, and subsequently, the SDP chief supporters were John Harvey Jones (chairman of Claude Wilson (Rothschilds), and Ed- Lindley mund Dell Minister and now a merchant banker). The chief executive of the SDP was Bernard Coyle - the former head of Booker McConnell. Roy Jenkins was himself an ex-director of the merchant bank Morgan Grenfell.
What makes the SDP very different to the Tories, for British capitalism however, and gives it a quite different tactical significance to the Conservative party, is that the SP has real links with important sections of the trade union bureaucracy. Frank Chapple, as Sir Graham AUEW the leadership Jenkins, Sir lan Gilmour 'wet' ex-Cabinet Minister, O'Brien England.
the SOCA tion.
*proportional tain.
identical. (ICL Cabinet ferences on other questions.
explicity considering the Alliance.
always - Since the election however the most important step taken by the right wing trade union bureaucracy was the decision of Gavin Laird, general secretary become vice-president of the SDP backed 'Cam-