The World - News from Oct. 3, 1988

Neil Kinnock, the relatively moderate leader of Britain’s Labor Party, overwhelmingly defeated a challenge for his job by leftist Tony Benn. In a vote at the start of the opposition party’s annual conference in Blackpool, Kinnock received 88% of the votes of an electoral college of labor union leaders, legislators and local party branches. Kinnock’s deputy, Roy Hattersly, also defeated a bid by two leftists, John Prescott and Eric Heffer, to unseat him. Kinnock hailed the results as a “great honor and a great trust.” He is bent on pushing Labor toward the center after three successive election defeats by Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.