Britain All Revved Up

Stylishly dressed, hair perfectly coiffed and wearing the inevitable pearl earrings, Margaret Thatcher had dropped by for yet another of British election organizers' much loved photo opportunities. This time it was a famous motorcycle manufacturer in Newton Abbot, Devonshire. The Prime Minister, ever the lady, would not be pushed into providing a spectacle for the press. "I think that would be a bit gimmicky, don't you?" she declared, politely declining requests to sit on a motorcycle or even grip the handlebars. But Thatcher is not one to miss such an opportunity entirely, and almost coyly she allowed her fingers to trace the name on the machine as photographers snapped away. It read TRIUMPH.

The prophecy proved accurate. Last week Thatcher's Tory Party was resoundingly returned to office, although with a reduced majority. She thus became the first Prime Minister in modern British political history to win three successive general elections. The country's 43.7 million voters, who regard her iron-willed leadership with a mixture of admiration and anxiety, gave the Conservatives a 101-seat majority in the 650-member House of Commons, 43 fewer than the party had won in the 1983 elections. But that was more than sufficient for Thatcher to pursue her "unfinished revolution" in reshaping the political, economic and social fabric of Britain. When she was first elected in 1979, the country was in such economic peril that only 2 1/2 years earlier it had sought a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund. Today Britain is a leading creditor nation with a vibrant economy, a rising currency and a booming stock market that soared anew in response to the Tory victory. Thatcher, says London's Sunday Times, has brought about Britain's "biggest transformation since the Industrial Revolution."

Under Neil Kinnock, 45, a balding, red-haired Welshman, the ever squabbling Labor Party managed to increase its seats in the House to 229 from the 209 it won in 1983, though last week's showing was still the party's second worst in more than a half-century. The most disappointed loser was the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance, which had become a third force in British politics in its six years of existence. Led by the Liberals' David Steel and the Social Democrats' David Owen, the Alliance had aimed to eclipse Labor as the main opposition party. Instead, its representation in the House was reduced to 22 seats from the 23 it won in the previous election. The vote was a landmark in one respect: three blacks and an Indian, all Labor candidates, became the first nonwhites elected to the House of Commons since 1922.

On Saturday, Thatcher named a new 21-member Cabinet. Most were holdovers, but there were two surprises. Norman Tebbit, the Conservative Party chairman who had just led the Tories to victory, resigned as Minister Without Portfolio. Though no reason was given, he reportedly wanted to spend more time with his wife, who was badly injured during a 1984 bombing attack by the Irish Republican Army. Cecil Parkinson, who resigned in 1983 in the midst of a sex scandal (he had fathered his secretary's child), rejoined the Cabinet as Energy Secretary.