British Labor Party Leader to Tour U.S. to Defend Stand Against Nuclear Weapons

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s main political opponent, Neil Kinnock, begins a weeklong tour of the United States today aimed at clarifying his party’s controversial policy of unilaterally scrapping Britain’s modest nuclear arsenal and expelling U.S. nuclear forces based here since World War II.

Many believe that, if adopted, the Labor Party position espoused by Kinnock could lead to the unraveling of the Atlantic Alliance.

The affable, 46-year-old Labor Party leader is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta on Sunday before traveling to Washington, New York and Boston for meetings with leading congressional Democrats, a series of media appearances and a speech at the National Press Club.

Kinnock has revived the fortunes of Britain’s main opposition party during his three years as its leader, mainly by trying to isolate its extreme left-wing elements--known as “the loony left”--and broadening its appeal.

However, he is personally committed to the party’s controversial proposals adopted two months ago which appeared to remove Labor defense policy from mainstream public opinion.

Although the Conservative and Labor approaches to domestic problems differ radically, Labor’s new defense policy breaks a 40-year consensus regarding commitments to the Western Alliance.

Shortly after the Labor Party adopted its new defense policy, its slim but consistent lead in the polls over the past year was erased and Thatcher’s Conservatives edged ahead. With a national election due at some point within the next 18 months, the two parties are thought to be about even in public standing.

Thatcher’s strategy calls for a $20-billion upgrading and expansion of the country’s nuclear deterrent. She would gradually retire the aging 64 missiles carried in U.S.-built Polaris submarines and replace the Polaris fleet in the late 1980s with more modern Trident submarines with the potential of carrying 572 warheads.

Thatcher has consistently refused to discuss any reduction of Britain’s existing nuclear deterrent until both the United States and Soviets make major cuts in their own far larger nuclear arsenals.

Kinnock, however, has pledged to scrap the Polaris fleet, cancel the Trident program, and order the removal of the 96 American medium-range missiles based in Britain. He has also demanded that the roughly 150 U.S. Air Force F-111s based here no longer be capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Many believe the expulsion of U.S. forces from Britain could lead to a re-evaluation by the United States of its entire military commitment to the defense of Western Europe.

“Such a policy is destabilizing and would carry grave implications for the future of the alliance,” said Defense Secretary George Younger. “It is acceptable only to a small, vocal minority.”

Kinnock rejects accusations that his party’s policy represents a downgrading of defense as a priority, claiming that Britain can no longer afford both nuclear and conventional deterrents and that emphasis should be placed on building up a more credible conventional defense force.

“The cost arguments are compelling, and in the end, final,” he told a group of American reporters recently. “The choice is whether Britain should continue to have a dual obligation and be unable to discharge either well, or make the choice to have one and fulfill it effectively.”

But Kinnock is also deeply opposed to nuclear weapons on moral grounds.

“For 26 or more years, I’ve had a moral conviction opposed to nuclear weapons,” he said. “Ten years ago, it was necessary to dwell on the moral case, but the horror of Chernobyl have made the moral argument less necessary.”