Kinnock and the 'Dafties'

...But several key unions, including the country's second biggest, the Engineers, have decided there is nothing wrong with taking government money to conduct a secret vote...

...Disappointment here with the current economic, social and political climate has reached deep into the Prime Minister's own constituency of middle-class home owners...

...There is now a real possibility that the fragmenting of the British trade union movement will have the additional consequence of ending its automatic support for Labor...

...There are bound to be casualties down the road...

...But according to the rules of Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC), no splinter union can be affiliated with it, and according to Labor's rules, no new union that is not a member of the TUC can be affiliated with the party...

...In fact, it is possible that a trade union organization to compete with the Trades Union Congress will be set up, and that it will develop a more pragmatic approach to politics, thereby denying Labor the automatic backing it has always expected from the unions...

...Many of the people who stand to be defrocked in this fashion have been lifelong Labor supporters, and they are growing disenchanted by the way they are being treated...

...Party workers conducting a membership drive in the city of Southampton, for instance, reported a startling success after Kinnock's bitter de-nounciation of the Militants at Labor's recent annual conference...

...He has rallied Labor constituents who were beginning to withdraw from politics because they felt overwhelmed by the revolutionary zeal the Militants bring to the most trivial local issue...

...In these circumstances it is not surprising that although elections are two years off, Kinnock is busily preparing for them—delivering a speech here, pumping a hand there, checking out a local party organization somewhere else...

...One might reasonably assume it is Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her merry group of Tories...

...They therefore face expulsion from the TUC and, as in the case of the breakaway miners, that would mean disaffiliation from the Labor Party...

...Even if they do not vote for Thatcher next time, they may simply abstain...

...Keenly aware that the Militants and their antics are vote losers for Labor, Kinnock has been attacking them as vigorously as he has been hitting out at the Tories...

...Thcv claim to merely be the supportNorman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...He has shaken off the lightweight image that plagued the first few years of his Labor leadership and is again seen as forceful and articulate...

...That would be a far greater danger to the Labor Party than the Militants could ever pose...

...The Trades Union Congress has declared the whole procedure a threat to union independence...

...They are more troubled than she appears to be about the country's high unemployment levels and the creeping signs of domestic industrial stagnation in the face of foreign competition...

...The UDM probably would be as willing to link arms with the Labor Party as the NUM...

...they are energetic, skillful political infighters...

...ers of a weekly newspaper, the Militant, and deny functioning as a separate organization, since that would be a violation of Labor's rules...

...This has enraged not only the Militants—who have for the moment decided it is advisable to call him misled, rather than an outright enemy—but others on the far Left...

...Nonetheless, by employing more full-time activists than the party itself they have managed to take control of, or exercise great influence over, several key municipal councils and local Labor constituencies...

...Since numerous unions cannot afford the expense involved, the law offers government subsidies for such balloting...

...Indeed, at a time when the creation or loss of a few hundred j obs makes the BBC's nine o'clock TV news, confidence in the flagging economy has further been rocked by the United States Army's opting for a French rather than British battlefield communications system, despite Thatcher's personal appeal to friend Ronnie in Washington, and the disclosure that the British product was an incomprehensible 70 per cent more expensive than the French...

...Where they exercise control— for example, in the city of Liverpool— they have introduced policies aimed at exacerbating social tensions to demonstrate that they will play no part in shoring up disintegrating capitalism...

...The Prime Minister's masterful debating skills remain unmatched in the House of Commons, but her performances are being increasingly dismissed as just talk...

...One of them has been elected to Parliament...

...Thatcher's raising government revenue by selling off British Telecom, British Gas and other nationalized industries has not helped her either...

...They aren't daft at all...

...Others are now maneuvering to replace a score of Labor stalwarts as parliamentary candidates...

...Alternately peering over his shoulder and yapping at his heels is Labor's far Left, in whose ranks he himself once stood...

...A lot of miners in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and other areas are tired of being considered outcasts by Labor as well as Scargill...

...Refusing to bow to his commands, about one third of the union's members continued to work normally, turning Scar-gill's forecast of an easy victory into a bad dream...

...That would be almost as bad for Kinnock, and he has been trying to work around the ancient institutional legalisms...

...The walkout failed largely because NUM "president for life" Arthur Scargill denied the miners a chance to vote on it...

...Kinnock has other problems, however, that could undermine his finally emerging as a credible alternative to the Iron Lady...

...Most aggressive are the Militants, a band of Trotskyites numbering no more than a few thousand who have successfully infiltrated the Labor Party and accuse him of betraying the true cause of the people...

...No less a figure than Lord Stockton (former Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) has likened the move to a gentry family 011 the skids: "First ofalltheGeorgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon...

...So far his efforts have come to naught, because the leaders of some Left-wing unions are not at all unhappy at the prospect of having rival figures in the movement shoved out into the cold...

...In contrast to the party's reform objectives, the Militant s are determined to destroy the existing order in Britain and establish a Marxist form of socialism, a frightening prospect to all except a few Britons...

...He is plagued as well by a Tory law requiring unions to hold secret ballots rather than raised-hand votes on important decisions, like calling strikes and electing officers...

...This major threat is a result of the abortive, year long strike by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM...

...But Kinnock believes he has Ihe Thatcherites on Ihe run, and he may be right...

...Then the Cana-lettos go...

...Thus Kinnock may find it difficult to retain their support at the polls when election day rolls around...

...After all, you never can tell who might be targeted next...

...Complicating Kinnock's conundrum is the perhaps more serious problem he faces with the trade union movement, which traditionally has financially and morally sustained the Labor Party...

...For besides losing the strike, Scargill saw tens of thousands of miners subsequently vote to leave the NUM and form the Union of Democratic Mine-workers (UDM...

...The situation is absurd...

...They are suspicious of the Militants' motives, too, yet object to anyone in their corner of the political spectrum being pounced upon by the party leadership...

...Kinnock has dubbed them "dafties...

...At the same time, each of Kinnock's assaults on the Militants has been followed by an improved showing in the public opinion polls...