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| Should today’s Labour pick up where the SDP left off? This play makes you wonder | Should today’s Labour pick up where the SDP left off? This play makes you wonder |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| The time feels right. The then-and-now parallels are so painfully acute the audience bursts out laughing. Are we reprising the olden days in 1981 when the Social Democratic party (SDP) launched and, in a firefly moment, was the future? | The time feels right. The then-and-now parallels are so painfully acute the audience bursts out laughing. Are we reprising the olden days in 1981 when the Social Democratic party (SDP) launched and, in a firefly moment, was the future? |
| At last night’s opening of Limehouse by Steve Waters at London’s Donmar Warehouse, the surviving protagonists were all there, watching themselves on that fateful day as they took the final plunge and split away from the Labour party. The gang of four assemble at the Limehouse home of David and Debbie Owen, arguing down to the last moment over wrenching themselves away from a party that leader Michael Foot was leading into an electoral abyss. | |
| Allow for dramatic licence, as it didn’t all quite happen on the day they summoned the press to announce their breakaway. Allow for a little exaggeration of each of their defining characteristics – but, yes, there they are, almost to the life, brilliantly acted to a script that captures each of their dilemmas and rivalries. | Allow for dramatic licence, as it didn’t all quite happen on the day they summoned the press to announce their breakaway. Allow for a little exaggeration of each of their defining characteristics – but, yes, there they are, almost to the life, brilliantly acted to a script that captures each of their dilemmas and rivalries. |
| How did they feel watching themselves at this turning point in their political lives? Afterwards, David Owen was pleased, despite his representation as bombastic and domineering. Bill Rodgers grumbled that both his physique and his jumper were better than that. Shirley Williams no doubt fidgeted at yet again being shown as famously late and badly dressed. Alas Roy Jenkins is dead, but his former special adviser bridled slightly in the audience at his bon vivant, claret-drinking image – yet Roger Allam, playing him, pulls off a remarkable performance that’s closer to life than pastiche. | How did they feel watching themselves at this turning point in their political lives? Afterwards, David Owen was pleased, despite his representation as bombastic and domineering. Bill Rodgers grumbled that both his physique and his jumper were better than that. Shirley Williams no doubt fidgeted at yet again being shown as famously late and badly dressed. Alas Roy Jenkins is dead, but his former special adviser bridled slightly in the audience at his bon vivant, claret-drinking image – yet Roger Allam, playing him, pulls off a remarkable performance that’s closer to life than pastiche. |
| The young audience were only dimly aware of this remote footnote to history. Yet they were intrigued and captivated | The young audience were only dimly aware of this remote footnote to history. Yet they were intrigued and captivated |
| I expected an audience of we old SDPers, mulling ruefully over those times – highs, lows and crushing failure. To be sure, there were sprinklings of familiar faces, but the audience was surprisingly young, many of them barely born in 1981. Some I spoke to afterwards had been only dimly, if at all, aware of this remote footnote to history. Yet they were intrigued and captivated, because it mirrors this era so eerily. | I expected an audience of we old SDPers, mulling ruefully over those times – highs, lows and crushing failure. To be sure, there were sprinklings of familiar faces, but the audience was surprisingly young, many of them barely born in 1981. Some I spoke to afterwards had been only dimly, if at all, aware of this remote footnote to history. Yet they were intrigued and captivated, because it mirrors this era so eerily. |
| Here we go again, a dominant Conservative government cutting the state and its services to the bone, inequality taking off again as wages still fall below the rate a decade ago. On the other side, how extraordinary to see yet again a Labour party whose incompetent inability to convince voters puts it 16 points behind in the polls: raising Lazarus looks easier than resurrecting this dead parrot under its current leadership. Even if they now mouth policies less extreme than Foot’s mass renationalisation of 100 top companies, plus exit from Nato and the EU, the far-left history of Corbyn and John McDonnell – after three decades on the backbenches opposing everything Labour did in power – renders them all identically unelectable. | Here we go again, a dominant Conservative government cutting the state and its services to the bone, inequality taking off again as wages still fall below the rate a decade ago. On the other side, how extraordinary to see yet again a Labour party whose incompetent inability to convince voters puts it 16 points behind in the polls: raising Lazarus looks easier than resurrecting this dead parrot under its current leadership. Even if they now mouth policies less extreme than Foot’s mass renationalisation of 100 top companies, plus exit from Nato and the EU, the far-left history of Corbyn and John McDonnell – after three decades on the backbenches opposing everything Labour did in power – renders them all identically unelectable. |
| So why not try it again now? That’s what this play is really about – and why it resonates. Listen to the SDP gang discuss what name their party should take and one idea was – yes, it really was – New Labour, and the audience roars out loud. | So why not try it again now? That’s what this play is really about – and why it resonates. Listen to the SDP gang discuss what name their party should take and one idea was – yes, it really was – New Labour, and the audience roars out loud. |
| Every faint rumour of an SDP resurrection is seized on by an eager commentariat at the moment. Is it true or fake news, those whispers that another gang of four – Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and (God help us) George Osborne – could launch a new pro-EU party? Depressed though I feel at the prospect of Brexit calamity ahead, I can’t quite imagine what concatenation of catastrophes could lift these four off the runway, let alone see them fly to success. | Every faint rumour of an SDP resurrection is seized on by an eager commentariat at the moment. Is it true or fake news, those whispers that another gang of four – Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and (God help us) George Osborne – could launch a new pro-EU party? Depressed though I feel at the prospect of Brexit calamity ahead, I can’t quite imagine what concatenation of catastrophes could lift these four off the runway, let alone see them fly to success. |
| The play ends on an elegiac note. The SDP failed, just. It had one election chance to shoot through in 1983, came within 2% of Labour, but lost most of its 30 seats, because first-past-the-post is a closed-shop voting system designed to carve up power between the two main parties, however unpopular. How close it came, though. What if … there had been no Falklands war and Margaret Thatcher had remained, as she was in 1981, the most unpopular prime minister in history? | The play ends on an elegiac note. The SDP failed, just. It had one election chance to shoot through in 1983, came within 2% of Labour, but lost most of its 30 seats, because first-past-the-post is a closed-shop voting system designed to carve up power between the two main parties, however unpopular. How close it came, though. What if … there had been no Falklands war and Margaret Thatcher had remained, as she was in 1981, the most unpopular prime minister in history? |
| What if Denis Healey had joined? He alone would have brought with him an avalanche of Labour MPs teetering on the edge. I was at a supper with the Owens and Healeys shortly before the split, Owen urging Healey to join. Edna Healey wanted him to go, but Denis said he had seen too many European socialist parties split, gifting power to the right. He teetered, but drew back. | What if Denis Healey had joined? He alone would have brought with him an avalanche of Labour MPs teetering on the edge. I was at a supper with the Owens and Healeys shortly before the split, Owen urging Healey to join. Edna Healey wanted him to go, but Denis said he had seen too many European socialist parties split, gifting power to the right. He teetered, but drew back. |
| Schism is a terrible thing. Friends stopped speaking, Guardian colleagues were at war and the left still taunts me and other SDP returners as betrayers, not “real” Labour. What is “real” Labour? The SDP manifesto was considerably to the left of New Labour’s 1997 prospectus. Remember Blair’s five cautious little pledges – although in power they did so much more than promised. | Schism is a terrible thing. Friends stopped speaking, Guardian colleagues were at war and the left still taunts me and other SDP returners as betrayers, not “real” Labour. What is “real” Labour? The SDP manifesto was considerably to the left of New Labour’s 1997 prospectus. Remember Blair’s five cautious little pledges – although in power they did so much more than promised. |
| We still argue: did the SDP set Labour back on the road to electability, with Neil Kinnock facing down Militant, John Smith moving ahead and finally Blair and Brown cementing credibility? Or did the split delay that process? No one knows. | We still argue: did the SDP set Labour back on the road to electability, with Neil Kinnock facing down Militant, John Smith moving ahead and finally Blair and Brown cementing credibility? Or did the split delay that process? No one knows. |
| That’s the question audience members will ask one another as they leave this play. Could it, might it, should it be tried again? Political plays do well: the National’s This House by James Graham, telling the story of frantic Labour whips trying to hold on to power in Labour’s dying days before collapse in 1979, has just ended a successful West End run. That is a grippingly dramatic slice of history, but with less direct resonance now. Limehouse, on the other hand, echoes down the decades right into the beating heart of Labour’s present traumas. If you were there or if you weren’t born, see this and ponder whether we ever learn from history – and if so, what should that lesson be? | That’s the question audience members will ask one another as they leave this play. Could it, might it, should it be tried again? Political plays do well: the National’s This House by James Graham, telling the story of frantic Labour whips trying to hold on to power in Labour’s dying days before collapse in 1979, has just ended a successful West End run. That is a grippingly dramatic slice of history, but with less direct resonance now. Limehouse, on the other hand, echoes down the decades right into the beating heart of Labour’s present traumas. If you were there or if you weren’t born, see this and ponder whether we ever learn from history – and if so, what should that lesson be? |