Laborite Review of A-Arms Policy Vowed

Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock on Tuesday pledged a fundamental review of the staunchly socialist policies that have brought the party three general election defeats in succession over the last eight years.

Kinnock left little doubt that the review will also include Labor’s controversial defense policy, which calls for Britain unilaterally to dismantle its modest independent nuclear deterrent and negotiate the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear forces based here since the 1950s.

In a deeply patriotic nation that is pro-American at heart, Labor’s defense policy was judged a major vote-loser in last June’s election. That election made Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the first British leader in this century to win three straight elections.

Thoroughness Stressed

Speaking to delegates at Labor’s annual party conference here, Kinnock urged the party to discard outmoded socialist dogma and face what he called modern political realities. He gave few details in his 55-minute nationally televised address but said the policy review will be “thorough.”

“It will spread across the whole field of our policies,” he said.

The 45-year-old leader is expected to face stiff opposition to reform from the party’s powerful left-wing minority that has traditionally claimed the role as Labor’s conscience.

But in his speech, Kinnock warned that the choice for Labor is to reassess its policies or “settle for being members of a party that can offer the British people nothing but sympathy.”

Kinnock spoke one day after party delegates voted in principle to launch a major reappraisal of policy. That vote was seen as a victory for party moderates, who have become more assertive in their efforts to wrest control from the party’s hard-core left wing.

‘Seem to Have Lost Faith’

“We have to re-establish our competence and credibility in the eyes of the electorate,” stated John Edmunds, moderate leader of Britain’s second-largest labor group, the General, Municipal & Boilermakers union. “Working people may not like Margaret Thatcher, but sure as hell they seem to have lost faith in the Labor Party.”

In sharp contrast to previous Labor conferences, it was moderate union leaders such as Edmunds who seemed to capture the party’s mood. Hard-line union activists such as Yorkshire coal miners leader Arthur Scargill have so far been conspicuous only by their low profile at the conference.

To many observers, Labor’s policy review constitutes a long overdue recognition of fundamental change in British society that has occurred over the past decade, change that has brought unprecedented affluence and blurred powerful class distinctions.

The fact that five times as many Britons today work in banking than in automobile production reflects a trend toward an increasingly independent, white-collar, work force as well as the decline of Labor’s traditional union bloc vote.

In last June’s election, only 40% of the country’s union members voted Labor.

The result was a blow for a party that was founded by the country’s big unions around the turn of the century and today remains among the most doctrinaire of Western Europe’s socialist parties.

Among the policies that are likely to come under review are the long-held ideological commitment to state ownership of heavy industry and a pledge to renationalize public utilities sold to individual shareholders in one of the most popular decisions of Thatcher’s premiership.

Labor’s renationalization plans proved highly unpopular with millions of Britons who have become shareholders for the first time.

Under Kinnock, Labor has already toned down strident socialist rhetoric and downplayed its most controversial policies.