Turmoil Right and Left

By Marguerite Johnson

Thatcher purges, Labor fissions, and here come the Social Democrats The London Sun called it "Maggie's Monday Massacre," and it indeed turned out to be a purification rite more sweeping in its execution than the experts had anticipated. In a ruthless purge of her Cabinet last week. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher cast aside dissenters from her strict monetarist economic policies and replaced them with unstinting loyalists to her stern anti-inflation credo. The action further split her already deeply divided Tory party and set the stage for a political season of unrivaled tumult and upheaval.

British politics as a whole was in a rich and rare state of disarray, only in part caused by the country's critical economic condition. Even as the Conservatives were digging in deeper on the right, the opposition Labor Party was in danger of being hijacked by its extreme left. Laborites were preparing for a bruising and perhaps fateful showdown this Sunday between the extremists and its old-line socialist faithful at the party conference in Brighton. Meanwhile the new Social Democratic Party, formed last March when a group of prominent Laborites broke away because of the party's leftward lurch, forged an alliance last week with the centrist Liberal Party. Object: to capture the moderate middle, Parliament and No. 10 Downing Street.

The next general election could still be as far as two years off, but the notion of an alliance victory no longer seems farfetched. The latest Market & Opinion Research International poll showed such a Social Democratic-Liberal coalition getting a 41% approval rating. By contrast, Labor trailed with only 31%, and the Conservatives received a mere 25%, the lowest rating registered for any ruling party since Labor hit its nadir during the 1976 monetary crisis.

The reasons for the Tory woes were obvious enough. The grim economic statistics showed no sign of the turnaround that was supposed to follow from Thatcher's austerity measures. Unemployment is now close to the 3 million mark, or 12.2% of the work force, the highest since the worst Depression years of the 1930s. Yet inflation, which last week jumped to 11.5%, has not yet been "wrung out" of the economy, and that was the chief aim of Thatcher's monetarism. North Sea oil revenues have suffered from the international oil glut, and much of the treasury's eroded bonanza has had to pay for unemployment benefits. The fiercest riots in Britain in a century exploded last summer in cities throughout the country, reflecting not only deep racial problems but the bitter resentment of the young who could not find work.

As her difficulties mounted, Thatcher budged, but only by moving further to the right. She coolly sacked three of the party grandees in her Cabinet and pushed out the popular Conservative Party chairman, shuffled around six other senior ministers, elevated three loyalists to the Cabinet, then fired four junior ministers. In all, 40 posts were involved in the shakeup. Out went Lord Soames, the leader of the House of Lords, Winston Churchill's son-in-law and a pillar of the Tory establishment, who as the last governor-general of Rhodesia had brought plaudits to the Thatcher government by skillfully guiding the former colony through its elections and emergence as independent Zimbabwe. Thatcher, who felt that Soames had ineptly handled a three-week civil servant strike, replaced him with Baroness Young, a life peeress and a personal friend, who becomes the first woman to hold the job.

Also fired were Sir Ian Gilmour, a haughty and intellectual aristocrat who was Deputy Foreign Secretary, and Education Secretary Mark Carlisle. Both men had expressed doubts about Thatcher's economic policies. Afterward Gilmour confessed that he had written his resignation a month ago in the full expectation that he would be fired. "Every Prime Minister has to reshuffle from time to time," he said in his resignation broadside. "It does no harm to throw the occasional man overboard, but it does not do much good if you are steering full speed ahead for the rocks." Humphrey Atkins, a Thatcher loyalist who has been unable to ease tension in Ulster as Northern Ireland Secretary, was elevated to fill Gilmour's post, while Sir Keith Joseph, the ineffectual Minister of Industry, was moved over to Education.

The most controversial ouster, however, was the firing of Employment Secretary James Prior, the nemesis of the Tory right wing, who had urged Thatcher to ease up on the trade unions. An extremely popular M.P. who acted as a lightning rod for disaffected Tory backbenchers, Prior had even won praise from Labor Party Leader Michael Foot as "a good man fell among monetarists." When Thatcher summoned her ministers to No. 10 Downing Street, she told Prior that he could have the thankless job of Northern Ireland Secretary--or nothing. After some hesitation he accepted the post. The choice of Norman Tebbit, a blunt-spoken former airline pilot and staunch right-winger, as Prior's replacement signaled a toughening government stance toward the unions. Amid speculation that Tebbit would move swiftly, starting with an attack on the closed shop, he insisted he would be rational: "I am a hawk but I'm not a kamikaze."

Next day Thatcher brought in still more hard-liners to second-level positions, tilting the ideological balance even further to the right. Declared Shirley Williams, one of the Social Democrats' four leaders: "She has replaced the Cabinet with an echo chamber." There was a simultaneous shudder in the financial markets. The Bank of England raised minimum interest rates two points overnight, from 12% to 14%. The move was made to strengthen the pound, which slid precipitously to $1.76 (down from $2.45 just a year ago), but it will also fuel inflation and make the single-digit target even more remote. The Prime Minister then let it be known that she was proceeding with her austerity program: Britain's 4 million public employees, ranging from teachers to trashmen, will be offered an average of only 4% in the coming round of wage negotiations. At the present rate of inflation, that would mean a sharp drop in real income.

The announcement was greeted with contemptuous outrage from the unions, and stirred speculation that Thatcher had made a studied gamble to confront the unions head-on this winter. Since last winter's public service settlements stayed close to the government-ordered 6%--and negotiations turned out to be relatively conciliatory--she may have concluded that workers are too afraid of losing their jobs to chance long strikes. But one of the first unions up to the bargaining table this time will be the tough mine workers, who enjoy strong public support and whose 1974 confrontation with the Tory government of Edward Heath caused the government to fall. Declared Union Vice President Mick McGahey last week: "The miners will be pursuing their legitimate claim for a 25% increase relentlessly." Warned M.P. John Hunt, a Tory moderate: "What very much worries me is that another winter of discontent and industrial warfare between unions and government could lead to a new outbreak of violence in the deprived urban areas, which could together sorely strain the social fabric of our democratic society."

Labor might be able to take better advantage of Thatcher's stern policies if it were not locked in another of its own confrontations, this time over the party's election for deputy leader at the upcoming Brighton conference. The office itself is insignificant, but it has become the battleground for the latest round of bitter left-right struggle. M.P. Tony Benn, 56, who gave up his peerage in 1963 and became a beguiling proletarian radical, is taking on the incumbent, Denis Healey, 64, a distinguished moderate. Benn has minimal support from his colleagues in the House of Commons, even those who share his commitment to total socialism and neutralism. But the far left has organized brilliantly, and of late has made inroads into the unions that have traditionally been aligned with party moderates.

The Healey side maintains that much of Benn's support comes from Marxists and other radicals who are not bona fide Laborites. They do not accuse Benn of being Marxist himself, a label he rejects, but there is little doubt that he has become a point man for Marxist groups. Benn's left would take Britain out of the European Community, unilaterally scrap all of Britain's nuclear weapons and bar U.S. cruise missiles from British soil. It would abolish the House of Lords, nationalize all important industries and redistribute the nation's wealth. "If we stick to our guns, if we are not diverted," Benn urges his supporters, "we have it in our power in this year 1981 to take the first step forward to bring socialism in our time."

Last week Shadow Cabinet Home Secretary Roy Hattersley, Healey's chief strategist, warned that the left's attempt to take control of the party manifesto "will alienate millions of our supporters, tearing the party into tatters and denying us the electoral victory the country needs." Noted the London Observer: "A fundamental battle about the nature of the Labor movement is now joined, with not only its policies but its whole direction within the body politic at issue."

If Benn wins this year or next, his election will affect not only the Labor Party. Large numbers of Labor voters--as well as some Labor M.P.s--could be expected to defect to the Social Democrats, who are already the most potent new force to arrive on the British political scene since the Labor Party itself was formed in 1900. The S.D.P. was founded last spring by the so-called Gang of Four--former Labor Cabinet Ministers Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and William Rodgers--after longstanding differences between Labor's left and right wings finally seemed irreconcilable. The Social Democrats now have only 16 M.P.s--15 disaffected Laborites and one ex-Tory--but have built up wide public support for their moderate views. Party leaders endorse British membership in the European Community, nuclear defense and a mixed economy. What the fledgling party lacks in grass-roots organization it more than makes up for in political skills. To the surprise of even its own leadership, Jenkins nearly won a traditionally safe Labor seat in a by-election in July.

Last week the S.D.P. made another smart move: party leaders attended the Liberal Party's conference in Wales and there agreed to form an alliance to fight the next election. The Liberals, who have not held power alone since 1915, have only eleven M.P.s (out of 635), but they polled 14% of the vote in the general election of 1979. The marriage with the S.D.P. may have been one of convenience rather than passion, but if the two parties had remained separate they would have canceled each other out scrambling for the key centrist vote.

A the meeting with the Liberals, Williams roused the audience with a stirring plea for unity. "We shall never be forgiven--nor should we be," she said, "if we allow struggles over personalities or the pursuit of advantage for one party over the other to deflect us from our purpose." The alliance, she said, would be "nothing less than a new beginning for Britain and our battered and unhappy world."

Putting the alliance into practice will be difficult. The two parties will have to decide which will field the candidates in the promising constituencies in the next election and figure out how to make their policies compatible. Next day, for example, the Liberals voted to bar nuclear weapons from British soil--a unilateralist position the S.D.P. strongly opposes. Asked if the alliance could work together in an election if it were divided on an issue as important as defense, Williams said: "We could not campaign on the [Liberal] policy, but I believe that a compromise will be agreed upon." Liberal Party Leader David Steel, in fact, promptly disavowed the vote against the nuclear weapons.

The Social Democrats were delighted with the week's developments. Marveled the S.D.P.'s Rodgers: "Nobody six months ago would have believed this possible. Now we have an alliance with every expectation--and certainly the intention--of forming the next government."

Thatcher's obdurate policies and the threat from Labor's radical left clearly benefit the Social Democratic--Liberal alliance. But there is still time for the economy to respond to the Iron Lady's will, still time for the shattered Labor Party to find its way back to the path of responsible moderation. As last week so clearly showed, the battle for Britain is just beginning. --By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by Bonnie Angela/London

With reporting by Bonnie Angelo

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