BRITAIN: The Left Jerks on Labor’s Reins

Tony Benn ‘s radicals bridle Callaghan ‘s power

It was one of the most bruising internal struggles in the 79-year history of the British Labor Party. At a mauling annual conference in Brighton last week, a successful left-wing challenge wrested effective control of the party from moderate Leader James Callaghan. It pointed toward a radical policy shift that could shake up British politics for years to come. It catapulted leftist Chieftain Tony Benn into a front-running position as heir apparent to the party leadership.

The leftist power stroke had been building ever since the crushing victory of Margaret Thatcher’s Tories in the national election last May, which left the Labor Party dispirited and divided. Party membership has dwindled to a meager 284,000, only 3% of the vote cast for Labor in May. At the local level, it is increasingly dominated by hard-left activists opposed to the centrists and rightists who look to Callaghan. When Benn and his core of radicals who dominate the party’s national executive committee mounted their challenge at Brighton, Callaghan and his allies put up surprisingly feeble resistance.

The leftists’ aim was to change three key features of the party’s constitution: 1) the procedure for drafting the party manifesto, an electoral document that is considered far more binding than U.S. party platforms; 2) the degree of control that the “constituency parties,” or local committees, exercise over their M.P.s; and 3) the method of choosing the party leader. Constitutional changes were necessary, the Benn forces argued, in order to make the party more accountable to the rank and file. Callaghan and his fellow moderates denounced the plan as a power play that might wreck the party, but they could not stem the leftist tide.

By solid majorities, the left won out on two of the three proposals. The task of drafting the manifesto was put into the hands of the national executive committee, robbing the party leader of his veto power in shaping policy. From now on Members of Parliament will have to submit to renomination by their local constituency parties midway through their terms—making them “poodles” on a short leash, as one moderate M.P. angrily remarked. Only the bloc votes of some moderate trade unions saved Callaghan from defeat on the third proposal: the choice of the party leader will remain in the hands of the “parliamentary party,” the elected M.P.s, and will not shift, as the Benn faction demanded, to a broad-based electoral college.

The right was battered at the rostrum in three days of bitter and derisive debate. At the outset, Party Chairman Frank Allaun, a left-wing M.P., blamed Callaghan and the Cabinet directly for losing the election. Defeated M.P. Tom Litterick, from Birmingham, angrily hurled a sheaf of papers on the conference floor and shouted, “This is what Jim did with our policies—aye, he fixed all of us! He fixed me in particular.” A stream of leftist speakers complained that Callaghan’s party had traded socialist doctrine for “watered-down Toryism.”

By the time Callaghan took the podium in the Brighton Center, the fight was all but lost. The hall bristled with hostility as he rose to speak. Unruffled, the former Prime Minister delivered a dignified defense of his record: “I claim without apology, I claim proudly, a fine record of manifesto achievements carried out by a minority government.” The blame, he implied, lay with the winter of strikes and labor unrest that had set the national mood for the Tory victory. He concluded with a call for unity: “Let’s avoid party-bashing among each other. Let’s have a bit of Tory-bashing for a change.” The plea drew a tepid response.

Callaghan, 67, took his setback philosophically. “My mind is quiet,” he later said privately. He promised his inner circle that he would stay on as leader at least through the 1980 conference in Blackpool.

But with Callaghan’s authority now seriously damaged, potential successors are already jockeying for position. His own favorite is former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who bravely defended Callaghan in Brighton as the party’s “greatest asset.” But if the leftists succeed next year in gaining control of the selection process—as they nearly did last week —the front runner will be Tony Benn.

A 54-year-old aristocrat, who disclaimed his title in 1963 (and later shortened his name from Anthony Wedgwood Benn), he was weaned on politics. At Oxford, where he received an M.A. in history, Benn was president of the select Oxford Union and a masterly debater. He won the first of his twelve elections to Parliament from Bristol South-East in 1950 and served in several Labor Cabinets.

Benn’s politics veered toward the radical left about ten years ago, when he embraced a Fabian socialism tinged with Marxism. Once coy about his ambition to become party leader, he recently declared that he “would like very much to be elected to that office.”

At Brighton his mere appearance on the dais sparked more spirited applause than Callaghan’s best lines had received. Speaking in a sibilant, upper-class accent, his cricketer-pink cheeks crinkling with earnestness, the former viscount called for bold economic and social reforms and vowed to wage “a tremendous battle” against “decaying capitalism.” One hint of policies to come under a future Benn government: a conference vote in favor of renationalizing —without compensation—the industries that the Thatcher government is partially selling off to the private sector.

In an eleventh-hour bid to rally the demoralized moderates, former Education Minister Shirley Williams, who lost her parliamentary seat last May, exhorted them to “stand up and start fighting for yourselves!” Though it was too late to beat the leftists at Brighton, the moderates have now established a so-called Committee for a Labor Victory in an effort to regain control of the party. Meanwhile, both sides of the mangled party will be fighting each other as well as the Tory government, which could only cheer Prime Minister Thatcher. As the conservative Daily Express wryly noted, “With enemies like that, who needs friends?”