Britain Invitations to the Dance

By JAMES WALSH

At his 1961 Inauguration John Kennedy proclaimed that the torch of leadership had passed to "a new generation of Americans, born in this century." In 1992 Britain's torch is passing decisively to a new class of Britons, brought up without an elite schooling or the right accent. Britain has had leaders of humble origins before, but next week's election is a milestone. For the first time, none of the chief standard-bearers are products of those ancient mills of correct breeding, Oxford and Cambridge. Of the Cinderellas awaiting the nation's hand, moreover, none looks likelier to dance all night than a newcomer accustomed to combat boots.

Paddy Ashdown, a former Royal Marines commando, is hoping that his Liberal Democrats will emerge from the election holding the balance of power in Parliament and a new lease on life. That outlook is promising. The absence of Oxbridge polish on the campaign's three stars coincides with a blurring of the ideologies that have long divided Britain. The opposition Labour Party of Neil Kinnock, the Welsh laborer's son, has struggled to shed the albatross of radical socialism. Now the ruling Conservatives of Prime Minister John Major, the school dropout, are patching up the social safety nets scorned by Margaret Thatcher's survivalism of the fittest. With much less to choose between the two main parties, chances are good that neither will end up with a House of Commons majority.

In a hung Parliament, the Liberal Democrats, who call the political center home, would be the object of intense wooing. Ashdown, 51, is ready. A comparative unknown on the national scene, he has been doggedly stumping the country pitching a message: Labour is a spent force, the Tories are uncaring, and "the realities of the ballot box" will make both parties "more realistic." As Ashdown defines it, realism is a fairer share of power for the movement that is heir to the great Liberal reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries -- William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George.

The Liberals went into eclipse after the First World War, thanks to the capture of working-class votes by the party of trade unions. Labour's post- 1945 welfare state was in turn thumped in 1979 by Thatcherism, whose strong + defense policy discredited Labour's now defunct creed of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Today recession-racked Britons are unsure where to turn. They are listening more closely to the clipped, almost military-style speeches of a man who spent his formative years defending Malaya against communist guerrillas and newborn Kuwait against Iraqi claims in the 1960s.

Born in India into a British army family from Northern Ireland, Ashdown acquired his generic Irishman's nickname at a boarding school in England. When his father failed as a pig farmer in retirement, Ashdown enlisted in the Royal Marines, took officer training and satisfied his thirst for adventure by joining the highly respected Special Boat Service commandos. After a decade of frontline service, he spent two years learning fluent Chinese and soaking up Chinese history -- prompting suspicions that he engaged in intelligence. In 1971 he resigned with the rank of captain, entered the foreign service and was posted to the British U.N. mission in Geneva.

But Ashdown grew restless with diplomatic life. According to friends, guilt about social ills back home got the better of him. In the military he had found many fellow Marines who were virtually illiterate. As he puts it, "Some were tougher, some stronger, some more intelligent, some more decent. Yet by accident of birth I was commanding them and not they me." He and his wife Jane settled in the Somerset town of Yeovil, from which Ashdown was elected to Parliament as a Liberal in 1983. After the 1987 collapse of the Liberal alliance with the Social Democrats -- mainly centrist defectors from Labour -- the two parties merged and chose Ashdown as leader.

In Britain's winner-take-all electoral system, the Liberal Democrats, whose public approval rating hovers around 16%, are not likely to gain a great deal more than the 22 seats they now have in the 650-seat House. If called to form a coalition Cabinet, however, they are prepared to exact a price: political autonomy for Scotland and Wales and a Parliament elected by proportional representation, the latter promising to give Ashdown's faithful greater clout. Since a proportional system would rob the major parties of strength, neither Major nor Kinnock favors it, though Labour has bowed to the idea of autonomy for Wales and restive Scotland. If a hung Parliament emerges, a Labour-Liberal Democrat match is the more likely partnership.

Strangely, Ashdown's personal appeal increased only after a newspaper's February expose of his brief affair with a former secretary five years ago. Unlike Bill Clinton's alleged amour in the U.S., the Ashdown affair left voters sympathizing with the party leader they had not known well before. Even so, whoever comes up with a Commons majority after next week, the bold leadership Britain knew during the 1980s stands to shade into a more uncertain thing. Tories and Labour are groping for new directions. Ashdown commands the middle of the road, but he may get trampled under the stampede to join him.

With reporting by William Mader/London