POLITICS
Time for all good loonies to come to the aid of the party
NOEL MALCOLM
Clearly, Mr Kinnock is not a man who likes to be distracted. If you ask what it is that he doesn't want to be distracted from, the easiest answer is invariably 'attacking the Tories'. The last few months have given him a good run, with Prime Minis- ter's Question Time turning into an almost liturgical sequence of versicles and re- sponses on the subject of dying babies; and the popular feeling within the Labour Party is that a Winter of Discontent will cheer things up no end. Mr Kinnock certainly enjoyed himself attacking the Callaghan government during the last Win- ter of Discontent, so he might be looking forward to a repeat performance.
A moment's thought, however, will have convinced him that you can have too much of a bad thing. 'Days of action' are all very well, especially when (as with the nurses) they are intended more as protests against government policy than as actions in sup- port of wage-claims. But as soon as any industrial unrest begins to bite, Mr Kin- nock will find himself once again cast in the unwelcome role of striker's friend; the Tories will be inviting him every day to denounce intimidation, picket-line vio- lence and the damage which strikes in the public services would cause to ordinary people's lives. He has not forgotten the miners, the printers and the teachers. In the circumstances, a good distraction might turn out to be enormously forgivable.
There are other reasons why a lead- ership contest would not be such a bad idea. However much he prides himself on his valour in attacking the 'Tories, the fact remains that Neil Kinnock's most popular and most effective victories are the ones he scores against his own Left wing. During the last four weeks, while public concern over the Health Service has risen sharply, the Labour leader's personal rating has nevertheless fallen to its lowest point since June. Compare this with the tremendous surge of support which he gained in 1985 when he made his famous Conference speech attacking the follies of Militant in Liverpool. (Glenda Jackson's telegram ex- claimed, rather as the actress might even- tually say to the bishop, 'At last, at last thank you, thank you, thank you.') The campaign against the extreme Left is still going on: only two weeks ago, Labour's National Executive Committee agreed to take disciplinary action against Militant supporters in Bradford, Leeds, Bermondsey and Peckham. But there has been something strangely shame-faced and low-profile about these proceedings. The claim to have eliminated the Militant threat is, admittedly, a claim which becom- es less convincing the more regularly it is made. Mr Kinnock can in fact afford to acknowledge the existence of the extreme Left in the party as a continuing side-show; and in many ways he would benefit from a few exhibition bouts with Mr Benn, who will suffer for his somewhat unlooked-for role as Militant's proxy.
After the general election, the London Labour Party commissioned a survey to find out why traditional Labour voters had defected. The results were depressingly predictable: the pull to the Conservatives came from tax cuts and council house sales, and the push from Labour came from the `loony Left'. 'That Bernie Grant — why didn't he get kicked out?' said one inter- viewee. 'Labour are giving people a chance who are just complete lunatics.' Hasty readers might sum up these objections under the usual complaint that Labour is too divided. But most speakers were not really objecting to the fact that Labour is divided; they were complaining that its divisions were papered over instead of being more openly contested. `Kinnock's a good man,' one voter said, tut I don't think he's strong enough. Every time you actually see him it's all false smiles and hey sunshine. He needs to be stronger, more dictatorial, more in charge.'
Mr Kinnock is undoubtedly in charge of his party; yet there are times when a party leader needs to be seen to be in charge, which is a different matter. Everything has come too easily to him during the last eight months. After a disastrous third defeat at the polls he should have been fighting for his survival, with all his policies wide open to attack and alteration; instead, the party conference gave him a hero's welcome, forgiving everything. His much-trumpeted `policy review' is to last not less than two years, during which time he will be able to dismiss all major challenges on policy matters as premature. And when two years of coasting are up, it will almost be time to say that any challenge to the leadership so close to the next election would be an unforgivable distraction.
The policy review is a curious exercise in pretending not to be in control. The pretence will be increasingly transparent, as it becomes clear that 'Labour Listens' only to the things which Messrs Kinnock, Hattersley and Gould want to hear; but the posture of sitting in the back seat with his mouth shut is somehow not calculated to display Mr Kinnock's special talents to their best advantage.
What is holding him back at the moment is a genuine diffidence about taking on the old ideological warhorses of the party. It is one thing to hit out at the far Left for its tactical folly, to accuse it of playing politics with people's jobs; but it is quite another thing to attack articles of faith such as the traditional interpretation of Clause Four, which calls (in a mixture of Fabian and Marxist language) for common ownership of the means of production. That way you risk being accused of playing politics with the Labour Party's principles.
Mr Kinnock has always ducked this sort of issue in the past, professing agreement with the principles and simply asking for pragmatism in their application. Now the ducking really has to stop. At the moment, Labour's leadership is speaking with two tongues. To the floating voters, its message is that a whole new package of ideas is about to go on sale. To the party diehards, the message is that nothing has changed, and that socialism has always been 'the gospel of individual rights'. There are signs of ideological schizophrenia here, which may drive many party members, quite forgivably, to distraction. A nice clean fight for the leadership — or, even better, a nice dirty fight — would do them a world of good.
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