Thirty years ago Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1918 after a rancorous split. John Spellar is proud he stuck with the party, while Polly Toynbee believes she had no choice but to leave

The 1983 general election was a tragedy for all on the left. Those who broke from Labour and those who stayed, both sides crushed – Labour by its own folly, the Social Democratic party by an electoral system that kills interlopers, as it will flatten the United Kingdom Independence party.

Oddly, I am often criticised as ‘tribal’ in my support for Labour by some, while others will never trust anyone who once broke ranks. Naturally, as we all do, I see myself as pragmatic: the first task is always to keep Tories out, whatever it takes. Every Tory government drives the country backwards, leaving behind public squalor. Their media hegemony dominates British public discourse, controlled by a handful of cavalier robber barons poisoning the political air. Keeping Conservative culture at bay comes first.

So after 1979 when Labour looked bent on self-destruction, when it selected the unelectable Michael Foot in pursuit of impossible goals, when it required social democrats such as Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers to stand on a platform of policies they could not speak to, breakaway seemed inevitable. Some 30 Labour MPs came too, risking everything.

As members of Lambeth Labour party, my late husband Peter Jenkins and I saw the worst of Militant and extremist invasion. Decent party workers we knew were driven away, votes were held at 3am to ensure the sane had gone to bed, anyone daring to support the European Union was subjected to a bombardment of organised abuse. Lambeth council was not just a laughing stock, but nastier than that: it was profoundly corrupt, in its employment practices, in its intimidating management by and for union cabals to the exclusion of citizens. Ask those who came after how long it took to clean up. As employment secretary, Foot did nothing to curb abuses, giving extra tracts of power to an undemocratic dockers monopoly. Nor would he tackle the takeover of local parties by people with no intention of making Labour electable. Even so, the Gang of Four found it a painful wrench to leave, Shirley most of all.

We all risk delving into history to select memories to suit our current views. Did I think then what I think now? Everyone likes to imagine they are constant as the northern star, while the fickle sands shift beneath our feet. So with some trepidation I dug out the 1983 SDP manifesto to see how much I still agree with now. With relief, I find it sensible – and infinitely so when compared with Labour’s notorious ‘longest suicide note in history’.

Abroad: stay in Nato and the EU, reject Trident, put Cruise into START talks. At home: a million jobs in that time of crisis, in home-building, home insulation and social care. Repair benefits so a family on £100 gets £124. Raise the school leaving age with Tomlinson-style skills, add in universal nursery education. A Bill of Rights, proportional representation (of course), decentralise power to the regions, secret union ballots and employee representation on every board. Use North Sea oil cash to invest in alternatives for the future (if only) – and 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign aid. Yet older Labour mythology has us branded as rightwingers.

In 1983 the spitting rancour between Labour and SDP was everywhere: in the Guardian canteen in those days, SDPers were shunned by some leftists. But later, the internal SDP schism between Jenkinsites and Owenites was even more bilious, a lesson in political passion.

Ifs and might-have-beens are futile, but I am damn sure that without the SDP Foot would still not have been prime minister. Nor should he have been: what some rated as noble principle always struck me as self-indulgent vanity. SDP what-ifs went like this: a majority said they would vote for us if they thought we could win, but first past the post breaks third parties. We ended just two points behind Labour, with virtually no seats. If we had pulled ahead, an avalanche more Labour MPs might have come over and we need not have waited another 14 years to get the Tories out. Perhaps, if, who knows.

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Polly Toynbee is a columnist for the Guardian

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I take the 1983 general election result quite personally. I had won a by-election in Birmingham Northfield in 1982 and was unceremoniously kicked out the following year in the disaster which ensued. The Tory landslide gave huge encouragement to the worst elements of the Conservative party and rampant Thatcherism – a price that the country is still paying today.

The election was summed up for me on election morning standing outside K Gate at the then Rover Longbridge works when I asked a young worker going in if he would be voting for me that day. He replied: ‘I have already voted and it wasn’t for you because the Labour party is only interested in minorities and there is a majority in the country.’ We were going to discover that only too well that evening. He had a point: the idea that a rainbow coalition could be assembled was completely fanciful and a great swath of our traditional vote was alienated by the extremism, particularly emanating from London with endless insulting gestures from its councils under the slogan ‘no compromise with the electorate’. Some of these were in organised factions in the 57 varieties of Trotskyists and some were more linked to the Communist party or traditional far-left groups in the Labour party. Some were just plain gutless opportunists, dedicated followers of political fashion. It took over 10 years to beat this Bennite heresy which ensured the Conservatives had far too long a run.

However, 1983 was also a perfect storm for the party as another tendency erupted based on the Jenkinsite heresy. Partly they believed that the 19th century had been a radical century, whereas the Conservatives had dominated the 20th century. Even allowing, as Roy Hattersley once said, Lord Palmerston as a progressive this was, in fact, historically inaccurate. More importantly its logical conclusion would be to treat the creation of the Labour party as a mistake, a proposition the majority of the party very definitely rejected. It further meant that the Jenkins acolytes secretly wished to reunite with the Liberal party. It was also based on a belief that the SDP, a rootless, classless party, could, in the TV age, overcome the need for organisation and effortlessly sail into power. This was disproved as it was submerged into the better-organised Liberals. Furthermore the creation of the SDP was an inherently flawed project. Its logical basis had to be that Labour was irredeemable and, therefore, unelectable. That proposition was completely refuted by the 1997 general election.

However, in the process it diverted a considerable number of progressive votes which again ensured the election of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. After 1983, many of us vowed ‘never again’. So while these twin heresies are still lurking around, it is true that much of the virulence has gone out of the political debate and one of Ed Miliband’s triumphs has been to maintain a civilised debate and to prevent the party tearing itself apart. I am sure that David Cameron had banked on this as his default setting for the next general election and must be bitterly disappointed that we have not obliged.

The best way to ensure that we never again face an election like 1983 is to reject both heresies and to ensure that mainstream Labour is well organised and able to put a credible offer to the British electorate in 2015, or even sooner if this wretched coalition collapses.

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John Spellar MP is shadow minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs

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