Labor Reaches for Unity

By Frederick Painton

The party agrees on a new leader but, as usual, not on defense

Just after he was elected to lead Britain's limping and divided Labor Party last week, Neil Kinnock and his wife Glenys took a stroll along Brighton beach for the benefit of photographers. As the cameras clicked, Labor's new standard-bearer tripped and fell into the chilly surf. Picking himself up, with a grin on his freckled face, Kinnock shook the water off his second-best suit and observed that "the damn tide came in."

The tide indeed had come in--and with unexpected swiftness--for the copper-haired Welshman, who became the youngest leader in the Labor Party's history. In his 13 years as a Member of Parliament, Kinnock, 41, a leftist with a pragmatic streak, has never served in a government post. Thus it was a measure of the demoralized Labor Party's desperate need for a new image, energy and, above all, unity that led it to choose overwhelmingly on the first ballot a candidate untested in the national arena.

Kinnock replaced Michael Foot, 70, who had tendered his resignation after presiding over Labor's worst defeat in 65 years, when Britons in June re-elected the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Kinnock's bandwagon rolled over three party heavyweights: the center-right's Roy Hattersley, 50, Leftist Veteran Eric Heffer, 61, and Peter Shore, 59, a moderate spokesman on economic affairs. The battle for the deputy leader's post proved much sharper. With Kinnock's tacit support, Hattersley defeated Leftist Michael Meacher, 43, thereby establishing what party faithful called "the dream ticket," a combination that seemed to bridge the deep left-right fissures that have plagued Labor.

For this difficult moment in the party's history, Kinnock was an ideal solution. With working-class roots deep in the black valleys of South Wales--his father was a coal miner, his mother a district nurse--he virtually grew up in the Labor Party. Though he was an indifferent student who eked out a degree from University College, Cardiff, he was keen on rugby, talk and political action. His wife, whom he met at the university, was so politically oriented that she refused a wedding band made of South African gold. Working together, the Kinnocks won Neil a safe parliamentary seat.

For three days, the Brighton conference bathed in an unaccustomed atmosphere of harmony under the dream team. But when the time came to consider the thorny issue of defense policy, unity quickly yielded to familiar acrimony. Backed by Kinnock, the party's National Executive Committee had crafted a compromise proposal designed to be acceptable to both left and right. Instead, in a wave of emotion, the cheering delegates reaffirmed Labor's commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament.

That was just the beginning. Another resolution aimed at NATO rejected "Britain's membership in any Pentagon-dominated military pact based on the first use of nuclear weapons." It called for the "elimination" of all foreign bases on British soil (only the U.S. has such bases) and declared that Labor's defense policy must be "solely concerned with the protection of Britain and its people." The resolutions passed by overwhelming acclamation.

Thus, once again, the Labor Party was locked into a defense policy that flouted national opinion. On the opening day of the conference, a Gallup poll showed that 74% of Britons, including 51% of Labor voters, believe that the party's unilateral disarmament policy would be dangerous for the country. Overall, the party was supported by only 24.5% of the electorate, just one point above the alltime low nearly two years ago. Undaunted, Ron Todd, the union delegate who had presented the unilateralist resolution, declared on TV: "I'd rather go down [in the next general election] than change the policy." It was that attitude that led the Daily Mirror, Labor's major supporter among Britain's big dailies, to observe that "only the Labor Party could still put money on a horse after the race has been lost."

With the notable exception of the defense issue, there were signs at Brighton that a touch of grass-roots democracy was creeping into the party. The rank and file in unions and constituency parties boldly voted against their leaders' choices. Moreover, five extreme leftists were expelled from the party for their leading roles in a faction called the Trotskyist Militant Tendency. The conference also moved toward moderation in its stance on the European Community: whereas during the election campaign Labor had pledged to pull Britain out of the E.G., the conference voted to stay in for the full term of the next European Parliament, or at least six years.

Kinnock has already served notice that he is eager for the next election, which must be called by 1988 at the latest. He wants new and younger faces in the leadership and, above all, an end to the debilitating struggles between right and left for control of the party machinery. Kinnock is impressed by a study by Oxford Professor Robert Waller, who has found that social change in Britain could be in the process of making Labor "the party of the past." Waller's analysis shows that since the 1970s Britain has become a society of skilled workers and homeowners, a middle-class nation that no longer can respond to the Labor Party's outmoded proletarian appeal. Kinnock's dilemma is that he must change his party without risking either a split in its ranks or a revolt by the suspicious hard-line left that gave him its support. The new leader likes to say, "I can work with anyone in the Labor Party who wants to win." If he succeeds in that, Kinnock has the easy charm, the pleasing personality, the political savvy and the determination to pose a threat to the Conservatives.

--By Frederick Painton. Reported by Bonnie Angelo/Brighton.

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.