British Laborite Seeks to Broaden Party Appeal

British opposition leader Neil Kinnock struggled Tuesday to overcome divisions within his Labor Party that threaten to undermine any serious challenge to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s rule.

At the party’s annual convention in this English seaside resort, Kinnock, 43, faced stiff resistance to his efforts to broaden Labor’s appeal beyond the ideological left and rebuild its flagging electoral fortunes.

Political observers believe that Labor must extend its support into the mainstream of the British political spectrum if it is to arrest a gradual decline from nearly 50% of the vote in 1966 to 27% in the 1983 national election.

Thatcher and her Conservative Party are considered increasingly vulnerable because of her government’s inability to reduce Britain’s 13% unemployment and because of Thatcher’s image of abrasiveness and indifference toward the suffering of those out of work.

Unity Considered Vital

Although Thatcher will probably not have to face an election until the spring of 1988, early Labor Party unity is considered essential if the party is to mount a serious challenge for power.

“Elections aren’t won in weeks or months; they are won in years,” Kinnock told the conference in his annual address Tuesday.

A major confrontation with the charismatic coal miner leader Arthur Scargill over compensating miners ordered to pay court fines during their bitter yearlong strike is only one of many issues that could deepen existing party divisions. The strike collapsed last March.

Scargill’s oratorical skills and romantic appeal to the miners’ cause have mobilized extensive party support for his compensation claim. If he wins the necessary two-thirds majority in a convention vote today to make compensation official party policy, it would deeply embarrass Kinnock.

Kinnock flatly rejects a move that would effectively overturn the court judgments, arguing that such a policy would alienate the mainstream voters he seeks.

Kinnock and party moderates won important votes earlier in the convention, but these victories merely deepened the left’s smoldering resentment.

Fundamental Disquiet

The clashes on specific issues reflect the more fundamental disquiet among the party’s left-wing hard-liners about Kinnock’s attempts to streamline Labor’s organization and move away from a 1930s image as a bastion of militant trade unionism.

“The only way to rebuild and help the poor and the victimized is to get the support of those who aren’t poor and are not victimized,” Kinnock said Tuesday.

Since taking over as party leader two years ago, Kinnock has moved away from doctrinaire Labor policies. While he still backs his party’s call for scrapping Britain’s nuclear arsenal, he rejects wholesale nationalization of British industry and has even supported policies first instituted by Thatcher, such as a provision enabling individuals to purchase public housing.

He has also copied Thatcher’s Conservative Party by employing slick television commercials and modern marketing concepts, emphasizing presentation over policy to broaden the party’s appeal.

In an attempt to reach many of the estimated 4 million Britons who will be old enough to vote before the next general election, Kinnock has appeared in a pop video with rock star Tracy Ullman.

Kinnock has altered his own image just as sharply, cutting his hair shorter, dressing in darker suits and looking more like a banker than a Labor Party leader.

Gaining at the Polls

His efforts have boosted Labor’s standing in national public opinion polls but have generated outrage from the party’s left, which has labeled him a “traitor to the working class” and a man willing to sacrifice principle for electoral victory.

But the highly publicized confrontation with Scargill has cut into these gains and inflamed party differences.

A poll released by the Market and Opinion Research Organization on the eve of the party convention showed Labor garnering the support of 33% of those polled, 3% ahead of Thatcher’s Conservatives, but trailing the Liberal-Social Democrat alliance by three points.

Despite the potential for further divisions, Kinnock appears in no mood for compromise with the left.

He calls their demands outdated and out of touch with current political realities.

“They want some kind of romantic vision,” he said of the left-wing ideologues. “I want jobs, economic growth, and progress. That is what will help the working people of this country.”