Kinnock Gets Results in Polls : British Labor Party Turns Away From Radical Image

BLACKWOOD, Wales —  One foot perched on the corral railing, his eyes admiring the horses in front of him, Neil Kinnock struck a rugged pose more in the style of a Ronald Reagan Republican than the leader of Britain’s Labor Party.

In the rolling farmland of South Wales, surrounded by cameramen and reporters, the youthful-looking Kinnock, 45, was busy altering his party’s radical image.

In the four years since he was elected leader of a party professing an array of extreme left-wing policies, Kinnock has overhauled Labor’s image, softened its traditional revolutionary rhetoric, buried the class struggle and appealed instead to the political mainstream.

Only the party’s controversial non-nuclear defense policy remains conspicuously to the left of mainstream British public opinion, but even that has been slightly softened.

The extent of this change, coupled with a strong organization, are considered the main reasons for Labor’s unexpectedly strong showing in the campaign for Thursday’s general election.

One poll, conducted by the Gallup organization and reported Thursday in the Daily Telegraph, which supports Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, shows Labor with 36.5% of the vote compared to the Conservative Party’s 40.5%. According to the Telegraph, that is just half a point away from the level at which Thatcher could lose her majority and Parliament would be “hung,” with no party in overall control. The poll found that the Conservatives had lost four points in the last week.

The strength of Labor’s challenge has surprised political observers here and shaken Thatcher’s once-supremely confident team of strategists running the Conservative campaign.

While Kinnock still remains a long shot in his first bid to become prime minister, the new-look Labor Party has suddenly made Thatcher’s attempt to win a third term something less than a sure thing.

Kinnock’s tactics, which follow successive defeats for Labor in 1979 and 1983 and eight long years in the political wilderness, reflect Labor’s attempt to adjust to fundamental social change that has occurred in Britain over the past generation. That change has blurred traditional class barriers and weakened voting loyalties long considered the most rigid in Western Europe.

“Labor will go on modernizing itself,” predicted John Cunningham, a leading Labor member of Parliament. “We’re buttressing ourselves on the middle and left-of-center ground.”

Although Labor’s left wing remains a potent minority, fielding nearly 100 of the party’s 633 parliamentary candidates, political observers believe that if the present transformation is not reversed, Kinnock’s crusade will constitute a significant watershed, marking the declining influence of the hard political left among major British political parties.

The changes since Labor’s crushing 1983 defeat have been considerable, both in substance and in style.

The revolutionary red banner of international socialism has been replaced as the party’s symbol by a benign red rose.

Instead of an emotive song associated with the agonizing yearlong 1984-85 coal miners’ strike, party gatherings now break up to the strains of “We Shall Overcome.”

Labor’s slick, 17-page party platform prepared for the election is a relatively succinct document, a far cry from the rambling 1983 program that political commentators jokingly labeled the longest suicide note in history.

Labor Positions Changed

In the years since that defeat, Labor proposals for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Communities, the abolition of the House of Lords and the radical extensions of union involvement in industry decision-making have all been dropped.

Instead, the party has focused on issues of more immediate concern to the country’s voters, including reversing high unemployment and improving education and health care.

A revived Labor Party organization has packaged and marketed its leader with a slickness rarely seen in British politics. The party’s media campaign, which depicts him as dealing forcefully with hard-left fringe elements of his party, is aimed at dispelling concerns of a possible left-wing resurgence, as well as doubts surrounding his own inexperience.

The son of a Welsh coal-mining family, Kinnock has never held ministerial office and has no experience in foreign affairs.

Many of Kinnock’s early campaign appearances seem designed more for camera angles and backdrops than for discussing issues with voters.

A highly polished 10-minute campaign film devoted solely to Kinnock aired recently on national television and drew praise for its technical merit but accusations from political opponents that he is running a “presidential-style” campaign. The film was put together by Hugh Hudson, who won an Oscar for directing the film “Chariots of Fire.”

Defense Policy Controversial

To some extent, the scope of Labor’s shift has been masked by the focus on its controversial defense policy, which advocates scrapping Britain’s own modest nuclear deterrent and demanding the withdrawal of American nuclear forces based in Britain since the 1950s. Some fear that such a policy might lead to an unraveling of the Atlantic Alliance.

Aware that the issue is a major electoral liability, Kinnock has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to avoid it when possible during the campaign. He has also loosened the proposed timing of any American withdrawal from 12 months to “less than five years.”

Exactly why Labor clings to a radical defense policy after abandoning so many other contentious articles of faith is unclear. Some say it reflects Kinnock’s own personal conviction. They note that Kinnock’s wife, Glenys, marched in 1983 protests against the deployment of U.S. nuclear cruise missiles in Britain.

Others believe that it is the price that Kinnock has been forced to pay the party’s left wing in return for giving up long-cherished but outmoded ideas.

Socialist Tenets Fade

In some ways, the changes within the Labor Party are part of a broader crisis facing socialist parties elsewhere in Western Europe as fundamental tenets of faith, such as the public ownership of the means of production, become irrelevant as issues.

In high-technology industries, increased wages and growing social mobility have also pushed many skilled workers into the middle class, loosening the bonds of working-class solidarity.

Moderate trade union leaders have also become increasingly impatient with left-wing radicals whose policies they believe have diminished Labor’s electoral appeal and distracted the party from the real issues such as unemployment.

The certainty of Labor winning the blue-collar vote faded as skilled craftsmen viewed Tory policies with increased interest.

In 1983, more than half the country’s trade union members voted for the Conservative Party, supposedly the party of privilege.

That fact alone has been a bitter pill for Labor, a party founded by the country’s trade unions 84 years ago, to swallow.

“Class is now irrelevant in elections,” maintained Alan J. Beattie, a political scientist at the London School of Economics who has studied Britain’s political parties. “If you run class through a computer and try to link it with voting patterns, it no longer makes any sense.”

Kinnock Combats Left

In an attempt to generate more mainstream appeal, Kinnock has led his uprising of party moderates against the ideological left that had steadily grown in power and influence over the past two decades.

Thatcher has described Labor’s hard-left radicals as termites who have eaten away at the foundation of an older, more moderate Labor Party of the 1940s and 1950s.

Since taking over from Michael Foot as Labor leader in October, 1984, Kinnock’s biggest battles have not been with Thatcher but with his own party’s extreme left wing.

His finest hour as leader is widely perceived to have been his expulsion of a Trotskyite group for policies that drove the city of Liverpool to the verge of bankruptcy.

He has confronted other radical fringe groups, collectively called “the loony left,” and tried to distance Labor’s national leadership from the militant London branch of the party, where Labor parliamentary candidates have variously denounced “heterosexualism,” recommended abolition of the British army and replacing it with worker brigades, and expressed glee at the high number of police injuries suffered during a race riot.

Left’s Strength Debated

Some suggest that Kinnock can never defeat the party’s left but can only keep it temporarily at bay. Others, however, see the changes as more permanent and insist that the left is now a diminished force.

Whatever the present status, few dispute that the party’s future rides on the outcome.

Labor already had lost an important group of disillusioned moderates, including four former Cabinet ministers, who broke off to form the Social Democratic Party six years ago. Should Kinnock fail to maintain his present dominance of the party’s hard left, others could also decide to quit.

Large trade unions, which despite the shifting loyalties of their individual members still provide 80% of the party’s funding, have also become restless, calling for hard-nosed policies that can win.

Some believe that the best possible election result for Kinnock would be for his party to do well, but not well enough to gain power.

“If Labor wins, it will mean 20 or 30 hard-line-left candidates will be elected, and Kinnock will have a real problem on his hands,” political scientist Beattie said. “If he comes close but loses, . . . he’s still a young man. He can complete the party’s transition and be in a stronger position to fight the next election.”