Tony Benn Is Back in Britain
GELB, NORMAN
LABOR'S PROBLEM Tony Benn Is Back in Britain BY NORMAN GELB London Few people in Britain derived more pleasure than Margaret Thatcher from the March 1 Parliamentary by-election in the...
...Even though his return to the House of Commons threatened the party's new unity, Kinnock campaigned for Benn in Chesterfield...
...After Benn's defeat last year, his party cohorts found themselves leaderless and adrift...
...But within minutes of the announcement of his election in Chesterfield at 2:30 a.m...
...Similarly, when the hard left politicians dominating the Liverpool City Council declared they would openly break the law against local council overspending, Kinnock— an aspiring opposition statesman, not an outlaw—warned them to watch their step and everybody else in the party seemed to side with him...
...He has said he believes the turmoil that resulted from past bitter ideological splits was good for Labor and helped it produce appropriate policies...
...On the other hand, given its standard bearer, the election was a special case...
...Regularly abused by the Tory-inclined press and convinced television reporters were out to do him dirt as well, he broke tradition and declined to hold daily press conferences in the three-week campaign...
...But their candidate, a colorless Liberal named Max Payne (nicknamed Maximum Pain by some irreverent, bored reporters who followed him during the election campaign), did remarkably well...
...Many people voted for Payne only in the vain hope of stopping Tony Benn...
...Michael Meacher, a hard left parliamentarian who stood for election as deputy leader in an apparent attempt to keep that seat warm until his master returned to the Commons, lost to moderate Roy Hattersley...
...Nevertheless, he learned to keep his natural verbosity reasonably under control, projecting himself as a man who could bring together Labor's various elements, formulate strong programs and, at the same time, be a " decent bloke...
...The answer could come later in the year...
...But he certainly could not have helped regretting this trick of fate...
...To the extremists who had seen their influence in the Labor Party whittled away by Kinnock, this must have sounded like Joshua's ram's horn did to the Israelites outside the walls of Jericho...
...Everything, in short, seemed to be moving along smoothly as Kinnock worked at rebuilding Labor into a credible alternative to the Conservatives...
...Some of Kinnock' s chief aides, such as senior Labor Party spokesmen Peter Shore, John Sil-kin and Kaufman, could thus find themselves under savage attack next autumn if the hard left regains the impetus it lost while Benn was out of office...
...The only question appears to be to what extent he will use his undoubted charisma to promote internecine strife again...
...It was largely because of Benn's advocacy that Labor some time ago began to require each local party organization to regularly "re-select" it parliamentary candidate—even when there is no reason to question the competence and policies of the person previously chosen, who may already be in the House of Commons...
...Except now that influence will be colored by Benn's presence...
...The trip he took this winter to the United States—a place Michael Foot never deigned to visit—was a huge public relations success in Britain, too...
...That would be sweet music to the Conservatives, of course, and perhaps even more to the Social Democratic-Liberal Alliance...
...Labor Party Leader Neil Kin-nock, meanwhile, has been reveling in the equally unusual harmony that he finally established within his ranks...
...Of late, she has been subjected to uncommonly outspoken criticism from fellow Conservatives who have grown impatient with her Big Sister approach to running the Tory Party and the government...
...But it is widely believed here that the international situation will require a reassessment, or make such a promise irrelevant, long before Kinnock finds himself residing at Number 10 Downing Street...
...Benn himself did not push his line either, and he carefully avoided being photographed with the hard leftists who came to help, like Ken Livingston, chairman of the Greater London Council...
...Although her own Conservative candidate was trounced, the return to the political scene of Tony Benn, titular leader of the Labor Party's hard left, could not have come at abetter time for the Prime Minister...
...The Alliance had been sagging badly in public opinion polls prior to the Chesterfield election...
...One of them, intimating that British troops were as guilty of terrorism in Northern Ireland as the IRA, had to back-pedal because of the anger she provoked in fellow Laborites...
...In addition, over 150 Labor parliamentarians journeyed to Chesterfield on his behalf...
...It would be a mistake, though, to suggest that this signifies a revival of Alliance prospects...
...Instead, he went out among the people: in the streets, in the markets, on their doorsteps...
...LABOR'S PROBLEM Tony Benn Is Back in Britain BY NORMAN GELB London Few people in Britain derived more pleasure than Margaret Thatcher from the March 1 Parliamentary by-election in the industrial town of Chesterfield...
...His agreeable encounter with President Reagan (despite "differences") and his much publicized clash with Secretary of State George Shultz over Central America went down well on this side of the Atlantic, where it was seen as balancing friendliness with eyeball-to-eyeball defiance...
...The process can have a seriously divisive effect, since it locks every local party group into needless wrangling and means members of Parliament must waste energy shoring up their positions against backbiting party opponents back home...
...based in Britain would be ordered out as soon as a Labor government was elected, and that Labor would never press the nuclear button even if Britain were attacked by Soviet missiles...
...It was the worst Labor performance in that working-class stronghold for decades...
...Still, in winning Chesterfield's safe Labor seat—as he was fully expected to do—Benn took only 47 per cent of the vote...
...nuclear weapons Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...
...Kinnock's effort to devise a new formula for British participation in the European Economic Community—in place of his party's stale demand for withdrawal, no matter what the cost—also pointed up a more reasonable stand on key issues than the Labor leadership had been able to provide for many years...
...Kinnock had been doing an effective job of personal image building...
...They included Dennis Healey, long Benn's bitterest foe within the party, and Labor Home Affairs spokesman Gerald Kaufman, who managed to speak for the candidate in Chesterfield without once mentioning his name...
...If the Party was hoping to signal a revival of its electoral fortunes in Chesterfield, it was sadly disappointed...
...He waged a skillful battle...
...Rather, he concentrated on the Tory failure to cope with unemployment, on the gradual undermining of the National Health Service, and on other issues where the Thatcher government has failed to match popular expectations...
...The hefty Tory maj ority in Parliament made it impossible for him to inflict any meaningful damage on Thatcher or her policies...
...He had no choice: Labor's expected victory in that constituency was to be its first electoral success since he had donned the mantle of leadership...
...Kinnock stayed neutral in the contest, yet clearly shed no tears at the outcome...
...With Tony Benn back on the scene, however, all bets are off...
...Benn took a forced vacation from politics when he lost his seat in Parliament during last June's general elections...
...Many people who ordinarily back Labor would not vote for Benn...
...Other far leftists, passionately denouncing the party's "soft" policies, drew no support...
...He garnered 35 per cent of the vote in the Labor bastion, driving the Tories into a humiliating third place...
...Now, to Thatcher's delight, Kinnock may have to cope with a resurgence of the suicidal infighting that doomed his two predecessors, James Callaghan and Michael Foot...
...True, eyebrows were raised when he declared that all U.S...
...Not that Benn scored the triumph he forecast...
...A true measure of Kinnock's impact on electoral choices across Britain, therefore, remains to be taken...
...on March 2, Tony Benn was promising a "passionate advocacy of socialism...
Vol. 67 • March 1984 • No. 5
