British Labor Pains

...Norman Gelb is The New Leader's regular correspondent in Great Britain...

...He could then devote himself to building a structure of policies the electorate might ultimately find attractive enough to send the Conservatives packing in the next national balloting, due to be held a little more than three years from now...

...Instead, within 10 months of his party's most recent humiliation at the polls, Kinnock has had to turn his attention from long-term election strategy to skirmishes with senior Laborites openly contesting his leadership...

...Although this is true to a degree, it overlooks the fact that, unlike Heffer, Prescott might just succeed in displacing Hattersley, thereby dealing a blow to Kinnock...

...Not only could the Labor Party emerge with its internal conflicts fundamentally unresolved, but the Conservatives could find themselves in a position to continue governing Britain along radical Thatcherite lines without having to answer to an effective opposition...

...Benn said his purpose was to unite public opinion against Thatcher and to promote policies truly consistent with democracy and socialism...

...Hattersley, though witty, is not the most inspiring of speakers...

...Despite trouble in the National Health Service, a help-the-rich tax reform and nine long years in office, her Conservative Party retains a substantial lead over Labor in the opinion polls—hardly testimony to Kinnock's skills as Opposition leader...

...The consensus was that it had no chance of succeeding...

...KINNOCK'S GAMBLE British Labor Pains BY NORMAN GELB London The British Labor Party somehow manages to sustain a level of excitement that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's ruling Conservatives cannot rival...

...Many Laborites are also put off by reports that Kinnock is examining American political marketing methods and is considering the kind of Personal Effectiveness Enhancement Training that former Presidential candidate Richard Gephardt underwent...

...The unmistakable implication was that Kinnock was doing neither of those things and had therefore proved himself unworthy of his position...

...Most important is the question of voting procedures...

...Prescott insists he has stepped into the contest not because he differs with the policies of the Kinnock-Hattersley leadership, but rather for organizational reasons...

...In an attempt to quash these dissidents and end the distraction, Kinnock has in effect called on his rank and file for a vote of confidence...

...In private, the Labor Party Leader actually did not seem overly exercised by the Benn-Heffer challenge...

...No doubt he will get it...

...In fact, he hoped to enjoy two years uncomplicated by strife among his notoriously strife-prone followers...

...For one thing, he is on the Right of the party, whereas most of the local activists are not...

...The voting for both posts will take place at the annual party conference in the autumn, but some senior party personalities quickly began making public statements and harsh exchanges have been heard...

...Publicly, Kinnock himself responded with contemptuous disdain...

...Yet under the existing one, any margin of victory would be viewed as a decisive triumph over Leftwing shenanigans...

...That is not surprising, since it was widely seen as scarcely more than a token gesture by two old-timers, one described even by some of their hard-Left comrades as irrelevant and unnecessary...

...It sounds too crass to them...

...A week later, however, an unsettling new factor entered the equation in the person of MP John Prescott, the Labor Party's energy spokesman...

...When Prescott withdrew his bid for the deputy leadership last year in the interests of party unity, Kinnock, rather than praising him, ungraciously commented that it would have been better if he had not caused a fuss to begin with...

...Last year, Prescott—who is on the soft Left of the party—abandoned his announced plan to challenge Hattersley when he was persuaded by Kinnock and union leaders that his effort would be divisive and damaging to Labor's image...

...He called Benn's move "daft and absurd," and forecast a massive defeat "for those who have put their self-indulgence above the interests of the party...

...Unfortunately for the Laborites though, this excitement derives mostly from internal conflicts so intense—to put it mildly—they have seriously eroded the party's chances of ousting the Tories from office in the foreseeable future...

...Mindful that a Prescott victory could jeopardize his plans to revive Labor's electoral chances, Kinnock is attempting to prevent the Left wing from manipulating the party's voting machinery, as it sometimes has in the past...

...This time Kinnock has strongly backed Hattersley, dismissing Prescott's candidacy as summarily as he did those of Benn and Heffer...

...That might not happen...

...At present the executive committees of local party organizations—typically dominated by Left-wingers—make the choices for their memberships...

...A product of the Labor Party's Left wing, Kinnock is today believed by his old cohorts to have been captured by the Right flank —specifically, Hattersley and friends...

...Hattersley, after all, is not terribly popular among the grass-roots local Labor groups...

...He has called for the introduction of rules that would permit all Labor Party members to vote in the leadership contests...

...With an open vote, both men must win overwhelmingly to come out of the hubbub looking comfortably in control of the party...

...The Left-wingers fear that if Kinnock retains easy control of the policy-making machinery, he will contaminate the very soul of the Labor Party...

...if anything, it would probably reinforce Kinnock's hold on the party...

...The Prescott challenge, though, appears to have a personal dimension...

...Many reflexively loyal party members who haven't given Kinnock's record much close attention may decide he really hasn't been doing very well against Thatcher...

...As deputy leader, he says, he would concentrate heavily on galvanizing the party machinery so that it would be better equipped to bring out the voters than it was in the '87 election...

...For another, he is an intellectual, and the Labor Party has never taken enthusiastically to such creatures as its elected representatives unless they are also silver-tongued orators, like Michael Foot...

...The Left-wingers (with a few extreme exceptions) nevertheless support Kinnock against the Benn initiative because he happens to be the only credible leader the party has at the moment...

...After Labor's third straight defeat at Thatcher's hands last June, party Leader Neil Kinnock looked forward to a period of calm in which to work out a strategy for capturing the middle ground in British politics...

...This latest bout in Labor's ever-recurring internecine turmoil was sparked March 23 when MP Tony Benn, the father figure of the hard Left, declared that he intended to run against Kinnock for the party's top job...

...Prescott knows this—in going for Hattersley's job he is deliberately bucking Kinnock as well...

...This move could boomerang...

...There is no love lost between him and Kinnock...

...Indeed, practically all Labor members of Parliament back him, including those with some reservations about the quality of his leadership...

...Yet he may lose more than he wins, with farreaching consequences for the party and Britain generally...

...Benn was joined in his act of defiance by Eric Heffer, another veteran hardLeft Labor MP, who announced he would be seeking to replace Roy Hattersley as the Labor Party's deputy leader...

...Here, too, there is some logic to his argument...

...The Kinnock-Hattersley combination is likely to survive the challenge to it regardless of the voting system used...

...Some Kinnock supporters are vexed by his apparently not understanding the gamble he is taking in calling for an open vote, let alone appreciating what might be at stake...

...Benn and Heffer obviously do not care whether Labor wins the next election, he charged, for their bid can only distract popular attention from the machinations of the Thatcher regime...

...Thus some have already indicated that they are going to plump for replacing Hattersley with Prescott in the hope that he will be able to exercise a braking effect on the party's rightward swerve...

...The party Leader likes the present mix at the top of the hierarchy and doesn't want any upheavals...

...The same is true for most trade union chiefs, whose unions bankroll the party, and for the constituency party organizations that provide its backbone...

...But now Prescott has opted to stand again for the deputy leadership, contending that as long as Benn and Heffer are stirring things up his candidacy won't do any additional harm...

...And that is not a healthy prospect for the country...

...But in their journals and at their meetings they have bitterly criticized him—for not standing behind Mine Workers' chief Arthur Scargill (whom Kinnock detests) in the union's suicidal 1984-85 strike, for refusing to lend firmer support to Left-wing local government councils when they vainly and sometimes illegally resisted government efforts to curb their spending, and for backing away from various other causes he deemed to be vote-losers...