"A Triumph for Lunacy"

By Thomas A. Sancton

Labor lurches leftward in a rowdy party conference

Looking out over the gilded hall, where shouting matches were degenerating into fistfights, the conference chairwoman, Lena Jeger, rapped her gavel and shook her head like an angry schoolmarm. "This isn't a football match!" she cried over the pandemonium. "We are making a spectacle of ourselves!" So it seemed. At the very time when Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government was slumping and vulnerable to possible attack, some 1,250 Labor Party delegates trekked to the seaside resort of Blackpool for their annual conference last week and promptly turned their guns on one another. The result was a brutal factional dogfight that even the pro-Labor Daily Mirror branded "a triumph for lunacy."

No one had expected sweetness and light. Ever since Labor's defeat in the 1979 elections, the party has been riven by struggles between its moderate parliamentary leadership and an increasingly radical rank and file. Last week's conference proved no exception. Headed by Tony Benn, 55, a former viscount who renounced his title in 1963 in order to remain in the House of Commons, the left arrived in Blackpool determined to wrest control of the party from its leaders. In particular, the militants aimed at three longtime objectives: 1) the right to draft the party's policy manifesto, which is far more binding than a U.S. party platform; 2) closer control over M.P.s by their "constituency parties," or local committees, 80% of whose members are leftist militants; and 3) selection of the party leader by the rank and file instead of the M.P.s.

The radicals were emboldened by an early victory. A conference vote increased their dominance of the National Executive Committee, stacking it 19 to 11 against Party Leader James Callaghan's moderates. The left-wingers later won a series of drastic new policy demands: withdrawal from the European Community, unilateral nuclear disarmament and a ban against U.S. cruise missiles on British soil. Although a proposal that Britain should quit NATO was rejected, the antinuclear pledges would effectively end active British participation in the Western military alliance.

Nothing better illustrated the leftists' mood of triumph than the cheers that greeted their hero Benn as he mounted the rostrum. "Within days of the election of a new government," the silver-haired radical promised, bills would be introduced to impose a wealth tax and to nationalize a broad spectrum of additional industries, from banks to trucking firms. Benn then called for the immediate abolition of the House of Lords. This could be done, he said, simply "by creating 1,000 new peers" who could override the existing members of the House of Lords and vote the chamber out of existence. The proposal caused Labor M.P.s, including some of Benn's leftist allies, to gasp in disbelief.

Benn's challenge sparked a desperate counterattack from the party's right wing. Former Education Secretary Shirley Williams railed at the "fascism of the left," scoffed at what she called Benn's "rubbish" and delivered an acid putdown: "I wonder why Tony is so unambitious --it only took God six days to make the world." As militants booed, she issued a virtual war cry to fellow moderates: "It's time to come up, to stick your head over the parapet and start fighting. Otherwise you won't have a party worth the name."

Callaghan tried to remain above the fray. Amid widespread rumors that he would soon step down as party leader, the 68-year-old former Prime Minister delivered what appeared to be a lofty valedictory. Though he skirted the prickly constitutional issues that divided the conference, Callaghan argued strenuously against unilateral nuclear disarmament or withdrawal from NATO. "I beg of you," he implored. "I don't believe the Labor movement will say, 'Stop the world, we want to get off.' " Most of all, he called for harmony. Exclaimed Callaghan: "For pity's sake, stop arguing! The public is crying out for unity!"

But any semblance of unity was shattered when the conference turned to vote on the internal constitutional issues. The first two ballots produced a tradeoff: the right retained control over the party manifesto, while the left won out on its demand that M.P.s must submit to renomination by the constituency parties midway through their terms.

Bitterness intensified over the question of how the party leader should be chosen. By a narrow margin, the left stripped the Labor M.P.s of their exclusive right to choose the leader. The vote prompted wild cheering from the open-shirted militants. But no flicker of expression betrayed the feelings of Denis Healey, 63, the tough former Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose front-running chances to succeed Callaghan were now jeopardized by the sudden rules change.

When it came to deciding what kind of electoral college would choose the leader, chaos erupted. Terry Duffy, 58, moderate head of the huge Union of Engineering Workers, urged his membership to vote against all the radical proposals. But his angry left wing revolted, and fistfights broke out on the conference floor. A compromise formula drafted by the N.E.C. was also voted down the following day, leaving the question to be decided by a special party conference in January.

Thus Callaghan, instead of being allowed to bow out gracefully, now faces fierce pressures from both sides. The left wants him to stay on until they can marshal their resources for a leader of their liking; the right wants him to leave immediately to get Healey in place as leader before the conference. Callaghan gives no hints--except to declare openly, "If Tony Benn is foisted on the parliamentary Labor Party, it would be a disaster." --By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by Bonnie Angela/Blackpool

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo/Blackpool

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