BRITAIN: The Left Jerks on Labor's Reins

Tony Benn 's radicals bridle Callaghan 's power

It was one of the most bruising internal struggles in the 79-year history of the British Labor Party. At a mauling annual conference in Brighton last week, a successful left-wing challenge wrested effective control of the party from moderate Leader James Callaghan. It pointed toward a radical policy shift that could shake up British politics for years to come. It catapulted leftist Chieftain Tony Benn into a front-running position as heir apparent to the party leadership.

The leftist power stroke had been building ever since the crushing victory of Margaret Thatcher's Tories in the national election last May, which left the Labor Party dispirited and divided. Party membership has dwindled to a meager 284,000, only 3% of the vote cast for Labor in May. At the local level, it is increasingly dominated by hard-left activists opposed to the centrists and rightists who look to Callaghan. When Benn and his core of radicals who dominate the party's national executive committee mounted their challenge at Brighton, Callaghan and his allies put up surprisingly feeble resistance.

The leftists' aim was to change three key features of the party's constitution: 1) the procedure for drafting the party manifesto, an electoral document that is considered far more binding than U.S. party platforms; 2) the degree of control that the "constituency parties," or local committees, exercise over their M.P.s; and 3) the method of choosing the party leader. Constitutional changes were necessary, the Benn forces argued, in order to make the party more accountable to the rank and file. Callaghan and his fellow moderates denounced the plan as a power play that might wreck the party, but they could not stem the leftist tide.

By solid majorities, the left won out on two of the three proposals. The task of drafting the manifesto was put into the hands of the national executive committee, robbing the party leader of his veto power in shaping policy. From now on Members of Parliament will have to submit to renomination by their local constituency parties midway through their terms—making them "poodles" on a short leash, as one moderate M.P. angrily remarked. Only the bloc votes of some moderate trade unions saved Callaghan from defeat on the third proposal: the choice of the party leader will remain in the hands of the "parliamentary party," the elected M.P.s, and will not shift, as the Benn faction demanded, to a broad-based electoral college.

The right was battered at the rostrum in three days of bitter and derisive debate. At the outset, Party Chairman Frank Allaun, a left-wing M.P., blamed Callaghan and the Cabinet directly for losing the election. Defeated M.P. Tom Litterick, from Birmingham, angrily hurled a sheaf of papers on the conference floor and shouted, "This is what Jim did with our policies—aye, he fixed all of us! He fixed me in particular." A stream of leftist speakers complained that Callaghan's party had traded socialist doctrine for "watered-down Toryism."