Britain Bringing Down the House

By Scott MacLeod

The debate in the House of Commons was heated and noisy, so naturally the Honorable Member from Brent East was in the thick of it. Discussing the deaths of suspected terrorists in Northern Ireland, Ken Livingstone suggested that the British Attorney General was an "accomplice to murder." Tories shouted, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" and the Speaker admonished the Labor M.P., demanding that he rephrase his comment. As Livingstone sat silently unrepentant, the Commons voted to oust him from the chamber. A sword-bearing sergeant at arms escorted him out the door.

The suspension lasted only five days, and by last week Livingstone was back in the House, ready to continue declaiming, posturing and in general living up to his reputation as Parliament's most outrageous figure. Dubbed "Red Ken" by the London tabloids, Livingstone, 42, is famous for his unabashed support of leftist causes and for launching indecorous assaults on government officials. He is also, not coincidentally, a major pain in the aspirations of Labor Leader Neil Kinnock, who wants to broaden his party's appeal by staking out more moderate positions. When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won a third * five-year term last year, Livingstone and others on Labor's "loony left" got much of the blame for the Conservatives' success.

The son of a chorus girl, Livingstone worked as a lab technician before entering politics. He became a folk hero for many Laborites in 1981, when he was elected leader of the Greater London Council. Livingstone turned the council, responsible for such matters as public transit, garbage collection and social welfare projects, into the biggest-spending local government Britain had ever seen. He attracted headlines by doling out tax funds to every group imaginable, including a gay community center, a Welsh harp society, a graffiti workshop and an organization called Babies Against the Bomb. The council declared London a nuclear-free zone, earning plaudits from the Kremlin.

While Livingstone won wider support for slashing subway and bus fares, his policies infuriated many Britons. One of them was Thatcher, who pushed legislation through Parliament abolishing the council in 1986. Out of a job, Livingstone was elected to the House last year from Brent East, in northwest London. His fellow Labor M.P.s shunned him, but party rank and file later elected him to a seat on Labor's ruling council.

In his maiden Commons speech, Livingstone angered the House by accusing British security services of atrocities in Northern Ireland, one of his favorite issues. In November, after a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army killed eleven people in the town of Enniskillen, Livingstone caused another furor by saying Ulster was Britain's Viet Nam and predicting that the I.R.A. would win the conflict. Livingstone defied Kinnock by demanding that Britain cut its defense budget and withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. By warning of a civil war within the party, he embarrassed Kinnock into dropping plans for a review of Labor's nonnuclear defense policy.

A rabid publicity hound (he posed for a magazine fashion spread knocking down two pillars, a la Samson), Livingstone disarms critics with his self- deprecating humor. If he ever becomes Prime Minister, Livingstone once joked, "so many people will leave the country that I'll have no unemployment problem." An animal fancier who keeps newts and lizards, Livingstone may never reach 10 Downing Street, but his irreverence will probably help keep him on the public stage for years to come. That is, if he doesn't tire of playing the flamboyant maverick. "Anyone who enjoys being in the House of Commons," he said after his recent expulsion, "probably needs psychiatric care."

With reporting by Helen Gibson/London