Schmidt's government at the cross-roads

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ninnies that Tatin Amar- soime to San Andres an HELMUT Schmidt and the German SPD - the models so often held up to us by Denis Healey and the Labour Right - face a major political crisis which could mean the end of their 16 year period in government.

It now looks as if the SPD-FDP (Liberal) coalition is certain to be voted out of office at the next General Election in 1984, if it doesn't collapse before then.

There are two immediate threats: one wing of the FDP is already talking about a coalition with the Conservative CDU/CSU. Alternatively, the successive victories of the CDU/ CSU in the elections for regional assemblies may by September give them a majority in the Upper House of the Federal Parliament. This would enable them to block any legislation from the directly elected Lower House where the SDP and FDP have a majority.

This crisis has hit Schmidt very suddenly. In 1980 the coalition was reelected with an increased majority over the CDU/ CSU. Schmidt as leader of the SPD triumphed over the CDU/CSU's candidate for Chancellor, the extreme right-wing Bavarian leader Franz-Josef Strauss.

Since then, the SPD has suffered a string of major election defeats. This is not just a mid-term swing against the government. The SPD has lost control of a number of major city governments (Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt) which have traditionally been SPD strongholds. In state elections in both Lower Saxony and SchleswigHolstein the SPD lost around 6%.

Their coalition partners, the FDP, also did badly.

The main beneficiaries Why has this happened? In many ways, the reasons are similar to those for Labour losing in 1979. The SPD's stability was based on being able to offer the working class some minimal reforms on the basis of West. Germany's relative economic strength.

The first cause of the political crisis is that even in West Gemany that prosperity no longer exists.

Unemployment in March was at 7.6% (relatively high), not counting the immigrants who have been forced to leave the country. The West German Mark is no longer the supreme currency it was. More and more SPD-FDP government has been forced to attack workers' living standards.

Schmidt faces pressure from differing directions. Most of his FDP partnes Cse Coser to economic ners are the policy, favouring large cuts in public expenditure.

On the left of the SPD, a policy has been put forward "Employment policy without cuts in social expenditure" "planned investment. « and "participation" , not dissimilar to the Alternative Economic Strategy.

The other major area where Schmidt is under pressure from the left and right is defence policy.

Schmidt favours the stationing American missiles in Europe and will only consider disarmament if the USSR begins first and it is directly linked to further Russian reductions. This so-called "double decision" has met with massive opposition from the peace movement (which has held demonstrations of several hundred thousand in Bonn) and from the left of the SPD itself.

Generally, like Callaghan, Schmidt has traded on his position as the 'experienced statesman' and a figure of stability. This has enabled the CDU/CSU to a final decision pending forthcoming arms limitation talks.

The SPD leadership has two responses to these pressures. On the one hand, Schmidt blames the party's losses on its appearing to be split, threatens to ignore decisions of the Party Conference if they didn't go his way, and demands that the party shift further to the Right. On the other hand, Party Chairman Willi Brandt, sees the need to accommodate a bit to the peace movement and the Greens, recognising • that their appeal is not iust to the 'lunatic fringe'. He has even talked of possibilities of SPD-Green coalitions.

The crisis in the SPD has yet to result in the creation of a coherent alternative to its left. The Greens and the 'Alternative lists' (election blocs between ecologists and some elements of the far left) take in a vast spectrum of political attitudes united only in opposition to nuclear power and nuclear weapons, to projects such as the Frankfurt airport extension, and a vague opposition to the big parties and economic growth.

The Greens were founded by a disillusioned CDU MP and its supporters range from 'blood and earth' fanatics and ramblers through to ex-members of revolutionary groups.

The Greens have so far not had to be anything other than a protest movement. In Bremen, where 4 Greens were elected to the State Parliament in 1979, they said that they would work with any other party, and at times this has included the CDU. The Greens have been able to grow because of the absence of any real revolutionary alternative to the SPD and also because they have been able to capitalise on issues that have led to protest movements which the other bourgeois parties have opposed.

Once their success goes hovand a certain point. the The organised working class is steel strike 1979 Greens will be forced to put forward a positive programme and, lacking any roots in the working class or labour movement, they will increasingly become a conservative force, open to pressure from the right.

The crisis in the SPD has brought about a split to its left. Earlier this year the 'Democratic Socialists' were founded by a number of left SPD members. It has however failed to carry more than a few of the SPD left with it: it numbers around 1500 nationally, of whom the majority are probably ex-members of the SPD. It has however managed to group a number of different far-left currents (mostly local groups).

Many of these currents are pulling in ditferent directions. There are groups which orient towards ecological issues and the Greens and others, such as groups of rank and file trade unionists in Berlin and elsewhere, who are more clearly oriented towards the working class movement. There are EuroCommunists, ex-Trotskyists and ex-Greens.

The DS does not have a coherent orientation and looks unlikely to find one without losing at least some of its constituent parts.

In many respects. it is still the key to progress:

competing for the same political audience and activists as the Greens and the Alternative lists and lacks a clear enough identity to distinguish itself from them.

It remains, however, a field in which West German revolutionaries must intervene to win the forces attracted to the DS through their disillusionment with the SPD and the Greens. Without such an intervention the DS will simply lead to another of the dead-ends that have dominated the German far left over the last ten years.

The Greens and DS attract the support of people who are disgusted by the pro-capitalist policies of the SPD, yet see no response from the working class. The ecological and peace movements represent at least something that is happening outside the framework of "conventional politics' and their success at the moment seems to point towards a possibility of going round the organised • working class, which appears unable to respond to the SPD-FDP coalition's attacks.

In reality this reflects a major disorientation on the German left. The peace and ecological movements will not even make lasting gains " he

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on den the mel beg app task mor that their own limited nands without involving working class movent - even more so if y are soon to tace a U/CSU government.

'he German left has to in the patient and arently unrewarding i of taking to the labour vement a programme t deals in an all-round war circles that Latin AmerWest Germany's 'consensus politics' are fraying at the edges. Bruce Robinson reports, and looks at the openings for the West German Left.

Will A chmi isis Strau way with the attempts of the coalition (and the CDU/ CSU) to solve the crisis at the expense of the working class.

Only if this task is begun now, will the political crisis of the SPD be a real step forward for the left, rather than simply resulting in a reactionary CDU-CSU government.

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