Britain Man in the Middle

Neil Kinnock was a worried man as he mounted the podium in Blackpool last week. As the Labor Party met for its annual conference, the latest polls showed that only one voter in four expects it to form a government in the next ten years. He knew that once again his leadership was on trial.

The conference had started well enough for Kinnock. He easily defeated a left-wing attempt to replace him and won endorsement of a key policy document for reforming the party and making it electable again — mainly by forsaking the goal of wholesale nationalizations. Then he delivered a confident, well- applauded speech in which he called on Labor to come to terms with the “fact of the market economy.” He sought to seize the initiative from Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government with his emphasis on environmental issues, individualism and competitiveness. When Kinnock insisted that no “slide to the right” was involved, leftwing Laborites growled, but were shouted down by the moderate majority.

Later, in an attempt to divest Labor of another electoral deadweight — the party’s commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament — he suggested that Britain might retain nuclear weapons while a Labor government took part in arms talks. But the conferees, led by Ron Todd, head of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, instead endorsed unilateralism and called for the removal of all nuclear weapons and bases from Britain. Todd had earlier responded to Kinnock’s keynote address with anger. His temper rising as he spoke, the union leader derided Kinnock’s supporters as “all sharp suits, cordless telephones, glossy pink roses and winning smiles.”

So the Labor leader, who knows that for his party to have a realistic chance of governing again, it must embrace unified and politically acceptable positions, watched it succumb to yet more division. Many supporters echoed the hopes of John Edmonds, head of the General Municipal Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union, that Kinnock “has won the party by his speech.” But another senior union boss warned, “If Neil retreats from the gunfire of Todd and drops any part of his reform program, he’ll be out as leader. Not tomorrow, not next week or next month. But before the next election.”