Alliance Would Close Parliament, Redecorate Country : Loonies Lighten Up Britain’s Election

The Rainbow Alliance had rented a public hall and two rock bands to launch its radical political program for transforming Britain, but not much of Britain showed up.

To be sure, both national television networks were there to cover the main political speeches and catch a rock band’s rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” the theme song for the alliance--an assortment of such unlikely political forces as the Monster Raving Loony Party, the Prince Charles Appreciation Party and the Highgate Universal Tea Party.

Even the British Broadcasting Corp. World Service, which beams its programs over the globe in 37 languages, recorded parts of what can only be described as the most unusual event of the run-up to Britain’s June 11 general election.

After all, it is not every day that a national coalition of political parties advocates abolishing Parliament, phasing out defense and closing down the country for redecoration.

But the turnout of the 100 or so voters in a hall that could have held three times that number was disappointing, especially after the alliance’s unprecedented triumph in last month’s local government elections.

On May 11, Loony Party chairman Alan Hope actually won a seat on the Ashburton local government council in the picturesque southwestern county of Devon. The victory sent alliance morale soaring.

The fact that Hope was one of only 12 candidates running for 12 council seats and thus could not lose deflated none of the elation that followed 26 years of Loony defeats.

“Today Ashburton, tomorrow the world,” Hope predicted and promptly filed to run for Parliament.

Speaking by telephone from the pub that he runs in Ashburton, Hope predicted that he would break all previous party voting records in his quest for the Teignbridge constituency, currently firmly in the hands of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party.

“People think of me more as a town councilor than a Loony now, so they’re taking me seriously,” he said.

Taking the Rainbow Alliance seriously is no laughing matter.

A Few Loose Planks

Among the looser planks in its election platform are proposals to convert politicians’ hot air into an alternative energy source and replace what it calls the hypocrisy of Parliament with the “true democracy” of electronic voting machines in each home.

The unrest in Northern Ireland would be resolved by reincorporating Ireland into a union of Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England and naming the whole the Wise Islands before closing them down for a year or two for redecoration.

“I think they need it, don’t you?” asked George Weiss, former businessman and now alliance chairman.

In foreign affairs, large unused European Economic Community food surpluses would be harnessed, with the notorious “butter mountain” turned into ski slopes and the “wine lake” stocked with herring “which could be fished out already pickled.”

The solutions, alliance leaders insist, are no less absurd than the problems.

“We present ourselves as a bit of a joke, but we’re really serious,” Weiss said. “The other parties present themselves seriously but are really a bit of a joke.”

So far, the prestigious Oxford Union, the debating society of Oxford University, has taken the alliance seriously enough to invite Weiss to speak at a lunchtime gathering and the insurance company, Allied Dunbar, has featured the Loony Party’s spiritual leader, the 46-year-old former rock star, Screaming Lord Sutch, as one of several prospective prime ministers as part of full-page newspaper ads captioned, “Allied Dunbar’s financial planning prepares for every eventuality.”

Although some Rainbow Alliance member parties, such as the Loonies, go back a quarter of a century or more, the alliance itself was formed just two years ago with the idea of pooling resources to field candidates in each of the country’s 650 parliamentary constituencies.

The move would have made it eligible for free television time. Alliance supporters blame the $800-per-candidate registration fee for reducing its slate of parliamentary candidates to seven.

Weiss admits that it is tough borrowing money when the alliance campaigns on a pledge to cancel all personal debt, but he steadfastly refuses to compromise and remains optimistic.

Modest but colorful successes of unusual political parties in other West European democracies would seem to support this optimism.

In Denmark, for example, the Progress Party’s revolt against high tax levels struck a chord with voters in the late 1970s that gave it a potent bloc of seats in Parliament despite pushing a defense policy that called for replacing the country’s armed forces with a hot line to Moscow and a recording in Russian of the words “We surrender.”

In the Netherlands, Provocation Party members elected to the Amsterdam City Council in the late 1960s distributed white bicycles around the city for citizens to ride and leave as they pleased.

Both the party and the bicycles quickly disappeared.

In Britain, the Rainbow Alliance claims to have influenced a parliamentary by-election last year when its candidate from the Crocodile Tear Party received 348 votes in a race eventually decided by 100 votes.

And Loony Party veterans are quick to note that key planks in one of Screaming Lord Sutch’s first election platforms back in 1964 included lowering the voting age to 18 and breaking the BBC’s radio monopoly by legalizing commercial radio, policies eventually implemented by major parties.

“Rainbow politics,” Weiss predicted confidently, “is the way of the future.”