A New Face in British Politics

...From that point each hoped in time to broaden its base so that it might ultimately supplant the Tories as the governing party...

...Paddy Ashdown is the newly elected leader of the Social and Liberal Democratic Party, the SLD...

...His immediate task will be to chart the direction the SLD will take as it tries to make an impact on the British imagination...

...A crisp 47 years old, Ashdown has a background more appropriate to a fictional character than a politician...

...In positioning the SLD to go after Labor rather than the Tories, Ashdown is exercising sound logic...

...After playing briefly around the fringes of the Liberal Party, he was elected in 1983 as the Liberal member of Parliament for the city of Yeovil in Somerset...

...They are quite as prone as Labor Leftwingers to cling tenaciously to policies the voters have repeatedly turned up their noses at—like pulling Britain out of nato...

...His SDP may be smaller in membership than the SLD, but Owen himself is a far more impressive figure, in Parliament and in person, than is Ashdown...

...They are annual gatherings where party policies are redefined...

...Beith was a victim of the George Bush syndrome—not so much wimp as bore...

...As a result, the gatherings, invariably held in the less than scintillating settings of postseason resorts, are still thought of as something to be endured so that the business ahead can finally get under way...

...Ashdown is convinced that the Laborites, humbled by three consecutive electoral defeats and incapable even in dire distress of putting aside their internal differences, are extremely vulnerable...

...The challenge before Ashdown is monumental—to revive the chances of what appears to be a terminally stymied third force in British politics...

...Unlike the American Presidential nominating conventions, these affairs are devoid of ballyhoo...

...The proceedings are for the most part forgotten soon afterward when Parliament reconvenes and spokesmen for the government and the Opposition metaphorically go for each other's throats on the floor of the House of Commons, where words and actions are more likely to matter...

...That is not to suggest Labor will yield over these voters easily...

...He is a three-mile-a-day runner, a mountain climber in his spare time, and a man of rugged good looks—all of which contributed to his victory in the SLD leadership contest over veteran Liberal MP Alan Beith, a much more experienced, subtle political operator...

...His name is Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, but he is commonly called "Paddy," even in the London Times...

...Neither believed it could quickly replace Labor or the Tories as one of Britain's two major parties...

...Most of their members concluded that although a third party seeking a role at the center of British politics might have some chance of success, two third parties confused the electorate...

...But the American way with party conventions—all that hoopla, noise and hyperbole—generally elicits ridicule here, rather than a desire to imitate...

...Very rarely are any substantive changes introduced...

...Neither party in the Alliance did well enough against Thatcher's triumphant Conservatives or Neil Kinnock's Laborites to be persuasive as a political force...

...In addition, the old Liberal Party— seemingly less submerged in the SLD than the erstwhile Social Democrats— has for a long time been the political home of many people who do not really seem to care whether they win elections...

...No wonder neither the Tories nor the Laborites appear overly worried by their carryings-on...

...What is more, the SLD's image, too, has been sullied by internal squabbles...

...Ashdown believes the Liberal / Social Democratic strategy was misconceived and doomed to failure...

...Shortly after Ashdown's election, a senior SLD figure announced that he didn't think much of the leader the party had chosen, and several former Social Democrats are known to share these feelings...

...While Tory Coming Next A Talk with UN Ambassador Vernon A. Wallers by Gertrude Samuels voters show no sign whatever of losing faith in Thatcher, there are many here who believe her vision of Britain is seriously flawed (a prominent Anglican clergyman recently called Tory policies "wicked...

...Steps of varying degree in that direction—Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's "presidential" style, the Labor party's adoption of a red rose as its symbol—have not found favor with British political commentators...

...Hence the subsequent official merger creating the SLD, and the choice of asinglechief, Paddy Ashdown...

...As a young man he was a member of an elite British marine commando unit, the Special Boat Section, in which, among other things, he was trained to kill silently...

...Prior to their merger, both the Liberals and the smaller Social Democrats sought to hog the middle of the political spectrum by taking votes from the Left wing of the Conservative Party and the Right wing of the Labor Party...

...They aimed instead at establishing a position strong enough to enable them to tip the balance of power inParliament...

...However factionalized Kinnock's party may be, it retains a formidable organizational structure in the country— something the SLD does not possess...

...He has made it clear that he wants the SLD to change course by concentrating its efforts on attracting Labor voters, with the long-run goal of superceding the Labor Party as the main opposition to the Tories...

...All that is needed, he argues, is for the British public to be made aware of Labor's intrinsic feebleness as a political force...

...Norman Gelb writes regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...

...Delegates representing local constituencies and affiliated organizations are subjected to sometimes stirring, usually tedious speeches and debates designed to instill enthusiasm— perseverence is probably a better word— in the party faithful for the political battles in the year to come...

...So Britain still has two third parties to attenuate its political third force and perplex the electorate...

...Later Ashdown joined the British Foreign Service, and for a number of years was assigned to foreign posts as a junior diplomat before turning to a short career in business and then to politics...

...Standing ovations for a pithy speech or a popular personality are about as exciting as things get at the conferences, except for the annual display of fraternal backbiting and bloodletting at the Labor Party gathering...

...He attended a university in Hong Kong where he learned to speak fluent Chinese, having already mastered Malay while on military duty in the Orient...

...Members of the SLD, incidentally, prefer to be called Democrats—because of their initials and the fact that a lot of people here do not take them very seriously, they sometimes suffer the indignity of being referred to as "the Salads...

...A former Labor government foreign minister and one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party a decade ago, Owen remains the leader of a rump of the Social Democrats that has refused to be incorporated into the SLD...

...The SLD was formed by the merger a few months ago of the venerable British Liberal Party and the comparatively youthful Social Democratic Party (SDP...

...Then there is the David Owen factor...

...Suggestions are made every so often that an injection of American-style showmanship might serve to arouse greater public interest in the yearly meetings, and therefore in Britain's political processes...

...The two operated in tandem as the Alliance during last year's election campaign, agreeing on basic policies and the particular parliamentary seats each would contest, so that they would not be fighting one another...

...The processes that coalesced these Liberals with the Social Democrats were protracted, painful and pockmarked with recriminations...

...This autumn, however, the British political scene has been spiced with the emergence of a new personality...

...Ashdown is a good, albeit not terrifically exciting, speaker...

...In fact, it is an open question whether the merger will hold or come apart at the seams...

...Thus they are natural targets for the SLD's appeals...

...They customarily cast Labor ballots, yet have long been frustrated by the party's inability to get Prime Minister Thatcher out of Number 10 Downing Street...

...Together they ended up with only a handful of seats in the House of Commons and an unmistakable loser's image...

...He rose quickly in Liberal ranks, managing to overcome a reputation for opportunism he acquired as a consequence of abandoning his advocacy of unilateral nuclear disarmament for multilateralism when it seemed to be the more politically realistic policy...

...The two parties were sober in their aspirations...