Britain's Opposition Regroups

...The new-style Labor Party will tone down its insistence on renationalizing the industries denationalized by the Conservatives, and will plump for state ownership only where the social and economic benefits are plainly evident...

...The move probably will not make much difference...

...Even then, Kinnock's endeavor to remake Labor into an outfit capable of winning an election could still be frustrated by the party's extremist wing...

...Manifestly enjoying himself, the Labor leader exuded confidence, authority and dynamism to the bitter end...

...Through conspiratorial manipulation of candidate selection in many parts of the country, the hard Left substantially increased its representation on the Labor benches in the House of Commons —from 41 to 57 of the party's current 229 seats...

...Among the smaller parties, the Social Democrats and the Liberals are in the process of regrouping to improve their electoral position, too...

...Kinnock will need his enhanced authority if the Labor Party is not to suffer the fate of extinction wished upon it by Thatcher...

...There is, however, one vote-losing policy Kinnock seems inextricably wedded to: unilateral disarmament...

...Kinnock has already begun to act...

...Moreover, although Neil Kinnock superintended the second worst Labor setback this century (the party garnered less than 32 per cent of the vote), he has been praised even by his opponents for having run an extremely good campaign...

...If he has his way at the conference, as seems likely, these committees will be put under procedural restrictions forcing them to be responsive to all the members of the local organizations, not only to the comparative handful of activists...

...They would in fact be lucky not to be put out to pasture...

...David Owen is at least temporarily stepping away from active involvement in the political scene...

...It is as if Walter Mondale had emerged from his trouncing by Ronald Reagan three years ago with a firmer than ever command over the Democrats...

...Deftly maneuvering behind the scenes, he has gained essential trade union support for bridling local Labor Party management committees, now often dominated by dedicated ideologues...

...His latest book is The Berlin Wall: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and a Showdown in the Heart of Europe...

...He is determined to lift the party out of its narrow ideological base...

...This is a regrettable development: Owen, a one-time Labor government foreign secretary, has been one of the most imaginative, perceptive and articulate figures in British politics...

...With its exaggerated and sometimes grotesque campaigns promoting gay and lesbian rights and the interests of ethnic minorities, and its huge property tax impositions in many of the cities it controls, the "loony Left," as it has been termed, did much to drive voters who might otherwise have backed Labor into the welcoming arms of the Tories...

...After Labor's three successive electoral defeats, he has come to the conclusion that the party is doing something fundamentally wrong...

...Both towns are especially pleased about the chance to drum up extra business after an unusually cool, damp summer that kept many Britons who would otherwise have been frolicking on the beaches firmly planted in front of the telly at home...

...Kinnock plans to take at least two years to refashion Labor so that, while adhering resolutely to social policies aimed at helping the unfortunate and vulnerable, it will also appeal to the growing number of workers who feel they have a stake in Thatcherite prosperity...

...The Alliance took 23 per cent of the vote in the election, but the absence of proportional representation in the British voting system left them with less than 4 per cent of the seats in Parliament (17 for the Liberals, five for the Social Democrats...

...When its delegates from all over the country converge by the hundreds on Brighton—accompanied by a small army of journalists, TV camera crews, and junior foreign diplomats assigned the thankless task of listening to hours of seemingly endless speeches that rarely reveal anything not in the papers the previous few weeks—the theme will once more be, "Where do we go from here...

...The politics of envy, so much a part of Leftwing ritual, has proved a flop and will be much muted...

...Traditionally these conclaves are held not in London or other urban centers, but in seaside resort cities—Blackpool this year for the Tories, Brighton for Labor...

...By contrast, confusion and anxiety permeated the high councils of the Tories...

...That does not threaten Kinnock's overall control...

...The danger, rather, is of a popular backlash at wild behavior by individual Labor politicians (new MP Ken Livingston has already suggested that the Irish Republican Army is not really all that bad), and of wellpublicized internecine struggles that could discourage potential Labor voters...

...For the Labor Party, which suffered an unexpectedly massive defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in last June's Parliamentary election, the summer months were taken up by low-keyed postmortems and fraternal sparring...

...He accepts the judgment of the New Statesman, an influential Left-wing weekly, that "Labor has a responsibility not just to articulate the plight of millions of people who cannot form an electoral majority yet carry on their backs the prosperity of those who could, but also to construct a politics which can ensure their transformation from a minority of losers into a winning majority...

...In most countries—certainly in the United States—if a party performed as poorly at the polls as Labor recently has, its leaders would have a lot of explaining to do...

...UNDONE BY PROSPERITY Britain's Opposition Regroups BY NORMAN GELB London Britain's midyear break in political activity comes to an end early each autumn with the convening of week-long party conferences...

...But Kinnock intends to go beyond merely cutting professional revolutionaries down to size...

...With his announcement that he eventually intends to create a "fourth" party, which would "finally give up the endless pretense that there are no differences between the Liberals and the SDP," he seems more remote than ever from wielding effective power...

...While New York sweltered and Athens baked, there were times in August when people here contemplated turning on the central heating...

...Thus, in the face of an electoral thrashing that resulted in Thatcher winning a third consecutive term of office, and in the Conservatives maintaining absolute control of the 650-seat House of Commons (with a majority of 101), Kinnock ended up with a stronger grip on his party than he had before the balloting...

...One of his main challenges at the forthcoming Brighton conference will be beating down his party's hard Left faction...

...Having fought the election in tandem as the Alliance, they are about to give up their distinct identities and merge into a single party that would be less confusing to the voters...

...In resigning as Social Democratic leader over his objections to the merger, Dr...

...His present hope is that a superpower agreement will neutralize the issue before the next election...

...They are unlikely to get many more unless the balloting scheme is changed, and that is something no government in power— Tory or Labor—is likely to do...

...For the stark fact is that, despite persistently high levels of unemployment, the 89 per cent of the British workforce who have jobs are faring better than ever under Thatcher...

...But things are different in Britain...

...Norman Gelb is the NL's London correspondent...

...It will seek to build a reputation for fiscal responsibility, a sharp departure from the spendthrift image created by the many Labor-controlled local government councils that have felt compelled to use their resources to soak up pockets of joblessness...

...Many have become homeowners, thanks to a Conservative program to encourage the purchase of council flats (as public housing units are called here) by their occupants...

...Advised by senior aides that it was a serious handicap, that the majority of the British people did not want to give up membership in the nuclear club, that the British atomic missile had become "a national phallus sheathed in the Union Jack," Kinnock vainly went into rhetorical contortions during the campaign to mask his unilateralism...