Kinnock Aide Quits With Hot Blast : Defense Spokesman Raps British Labor Party Leader

Britain’s opposition Labor Party defense spokesman resigned today with a harsh attack on leader Neil Kinnock, dealing a blow to Kinnock’s authority and plunging the divided party into deeper turmoil.

Denzil Davies, 49, announced his resignation in an early morning telephone call to a reporter before Kinnock was told.

“I am fed up with being humiliated by Mr. Kinnock,” Davies said. “He never consults me on anything.”

A week ago Kinnock stunned party members by moving away from Labor’s longstanding policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Davies, a member of the opposition shadow Cabinet and chief defense and disarmament spokesman for the last five years, said the shift was “the last straw.”

Kinnock Expresses Surprise

Kinnock expressed surprise and sadness at the move. “He had given me absolutely no hint of his feelings directly or indirectly,” he said in a statement.

He said Davies will be replaced by his deputy, Scottish member of Parliament Martin O’Neill.

The resignation, unprecedented both in its manner and the ferocity of the personal attack on the party leader, plunged Labor into a new crisis.

Kinnock has been trying to remold party policies after three humiliating general election defeats in an effort to make Labor more popular with middle-of-the road voters. But a leadership challenge by left-wingers launched earlier this year has divided loyalties and diverted public attention.

At the heart of the row is one of Labor’s most sacred tenets: nuclear policy.

Policy No Longer Appropriate

In a television interview, Kinnock said he no longer believes “something-for-nothing” unilateralism is appropriate since the U.S.-Soviet accord on scrapping intermediate nuclear weapons, effectively nullifying the disarmament policy presented to the electorate in the last two general elections.

Davies, a moderate linked to neither the party’s left nor right wings, said: “We were supposed to have a review and he just went off on to the television to give his own policy. He goes on television and he talks about defense, but he never talks to his defense spokesman.”

Members of the party’s left wing said the affair further justified their challenge for the leadership in which veteran leftist Tony Benn will stand against Kinnock at elections during the October party conference.