When Britain's opposition Labor Party descended upon the southern coastal town of Brighton in October, the question on most lips was quite simple: Could Labor, out in the political cold for the past 10 years, produce the policies to achieve victory in the next national election, now only a couple of years away?
By the time the delegates had left Brighton, a general feeling prevailed that the party had at least made some headway in making itself palatable to voters. Yet, it is a testimony to the lasting effect of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher upon British politics that, in order to put itself even within distance of wining the next election, the Labor party was forced to adopt not only "Thatcherite" rhetoric but also "Thatcherite" policy.
As part of this accommodation to "Thatcherism," Labor's leadership (now fully in control of the party machinery) decided to use the opportunity of the conference to display how far it was prepared to go in dumping its left-wing image. Labor's new slogan, "Meet the Challenge: Make the Change," set the tone for a volte-face in ideology. "Socialism," once the staple of many a speech from the podium, was hardly mentioned at all--except, that is, for the new and strange concept of "supply-side socialism." On the other hand, the rhetoric was thick with talk about "markets," "efficiency," and "opportunity."
In his leader's speech to the delegates, Neil Kinnock, once the doyen of romantic leftism, decided to abandon every left-wing nostrum he had peddled during the early 1980s and, instead, concentrate on bland assertions of his "green" credentials. Kinnock, like American presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, has obviously decided to make competence, not ideology, his message.
If Kinnock's rhetoric helped to refurbish labor's image, then the serious business of the conference also edged the party toward the modern world. The conference rejected appeals that the next Labor government repeal the Conservative legislation that has brought Britain's stubbornly militant trade unions within the law. It also refused to back a left-wing motion that sought a pledge to renationalize industries and services privatized by the Thatcher governments since 1979. Yet, even these substantial changes to its domestic agenda were put in the shade by the party's remarkable turnabout on the central issue of defense.
'Conversion' On Defense
For more than a decade, Labor had promulgated what was tantamount to an undiluted strategy of nuclear pacifism. This was expressed in a declared policy of abandoning the British nuclear deterrent ("decommissioning" the country's Polaris submarines) and expelling U.S. nuclear bases and facilities from British soil and waters. This unilateral approach has now been completely overthrown in favor of "multilateral" disarmament, and Kinnock explains this dramatic change simply by arguing that he has been "converted."
The defense issue has been the electoral albatross around Labor's neck and is credited by many commentators as being the single most important reason for the party's abysmal showing in the 1980s. It remains to be seen whether Labor's "conversion" to the principle of multilateralism will win back many of the voters who deserted the party because they simply did not
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