Politics
Kinnock, the pink 'un
Just back from India, another country which no longer has an Opposition worthy of the name, I find myself looking at British politics with what one would like to describe as a fresh eye; speaking from a position of ignorance would be another description. I read, arriving on Sunday, that Mr Kinnock has reasserted his lead- ership and humiliated the hard Left. Read- ing on, one discovers that his chosen way of doing this is to refuse to call for any debate on the coal strike. From this tem- porarily detached position, it looks odd that the Leader of the Opposition believes that he is doing himself a favour by demanding silence on the most important political crisis of the past 12 months.
It is not as if Mr Kinnock found himself trapped into this position. He seems to have picked it carefully, and to have made as much noise as he could about it. Indeed, he shouted so loudly at his meeting with the Left that he made himself audible to journalists down the corridor. He took advantage of interviews booked over the weekend to repeat and amplify his mes- sage. He chose to make this the biggest issue of his leadership since his call for one-man, one-vote in the constituency Labour parties. Perhaps he is being no wiser, and will be no more successful than he was then.
According to Mr Kinnock, there was no point in having a debate on the coal strike because such a debatg :would he about.the • condition of the NUM 4n that I don't think we ought to present voluntarily to the Conservative Party.' It is nicely put, with its implication that the NUM is so pathetic and beaten that it must be shielded by its .friends from the beastli- ness of the enemy; less brilliant,, though, in its unintended implication that the Opposi- tion is incapable of directing the debate to the areas which it considers important. Mr Kinnock unwittingly accepts that the Gov- ernment has the better of the question an odd view for a Labour leader about a strike which 'the whole might of the state' (Mr Benn's phrase) has not been able to beat down for ten months. If Labour cannot use Parliament to criticise the Gov- ernment's handling of the strike, does it have any Parliamentary use at all? It is curious that all those extra-Parliamentary men of the hard Left are the only ones clamouring for a debate. Indeed, it may have been their advocacy which unseated Mr Kinnock's judgment, particularly when he discovered that many of those MPs who consider themselves thoroughly left-wing were not invited to join in last Thursday's protest and were feeling more than usually anti-Benn as a result.
It would not, after all, have been im- possible for Labour to have made a per- fectly good show in a debate. By his own account, Mr Kinnock has spent most of the past year 'putting the case for coal', and must be capable of putting it yet again. He could explain in more detail his notion of a new inquiry into the nation's energy needs which would help to reconcile the parties, besides renewing his attack on an intransi- gent and unfeeling Government. Of course it would be agonisingly tedious. Of course Labour has nothing of real value to say on the subject. Of course a debate on the strike would have been about the 'condi- tion of the NUM', but Mr Kinnock is not supposed to admit that: he is supposed to do something to remedy it. A strike in the coalfields raises most of the major ques- tions which divide socialists from Con- servatives and summons up the emotions which have in the past given the Labour Party its strength. If the Left thinks that a disinclination to discuss the subject makes Labour look abject, it is right.
The Left is also right, then, in marking this as Neil Kinnock's farewell to his radical roots. On Weekend World, Mr Kinnock allowed himself to be filmed reading a copy of the Financial Times, an act more eloquent of his purpose than his accompanying words. He is no longer looking for ways of pacifying or moderat- ing the Left: he is trying to snub it and separate-himself from it. He speaks of the latixurious' opinions of Mr Benn and his followers. He has decided to go the way of all Labottr leaders.
It would be hard to say whether the strike has changed Mr Kinnock's attitude to the Left, or whether his changed atti- tude has made him sick of the strike. Whichever it is, his view of the strike seems to have changed more than most people `Terry Waite can't help you, but the Chief Rabbi sent this.' suppose. Until recently, he was pessimistic and lukewarm because of his dislike of Mr Scargill, but though his head doubted, his heart was with the pickets. In recent weeks, he appears to have turned against the strike as thoroughly, though not as publicly, as Mrs Thatcher herself. Any prolongation of it gives the Left publicity; defeat gives the Left a lesson. And quick and thorough defeat is in some ways preferable to a long drawn out comprom- ise, for it puts a stop to the thing and so to Mr Scargill. From now on, therefore, Labour will do nothing to help the strike and, unlike in the past, intends to make a virtue of doing nothing. The Left has cause for indignation. Mr Kinnock's attitude is not unprecedented in a Labour leader, but it is extraordinary in him, when one consid- ers where he comes from, who his father was, and what he has always claimed to believe.
So I, still the temporary tourist, ask, do all your political parties oppose the miners' strike? Yes, they do. And your main Opposition party is called the Labour Party? That is right. And what does your Labour Party want for the labour move- ment from the ending of the strike? I'm afraid I cannot help you there; unless perhaps, it is enough for it that the agony should be abated and a period of relative calm ensue. Perhaps it is enough that Mr Scargill should cease to appear on televi- sion every day. Labour politicians are modest and humbled men these days they no longer ask for very much. I see, thank you.
No doubt — since his lines of com- munication with the NUM are not very good — Mr Kinnock was not to know when he made himself aggressive last week, that the union was about to move towards negotiation. As a result, Labour has another subject for the debate that Mr Kinnock has forbidden — the Govern- ment's wickedness in discouraging further talks. The last, admittedly not very good hope of the NUM must be that it can appear, for the first time, as the party that would like to end the strike, but cannot because of Mrs Thatcher. With this alone, Labour could have filled up six hours of Parliamentary time. It might even have embarrassed the Government, for one of the slogans many Tory MPs still love to repeat is the one about in victory, magna- nimity. There will be a faction on the Government benches in the next few weeks which will demand that what the strike has not won, the Government should concede ex gratia, and it will take a subtlety which Mrs Thatcher does not always ex- hibit to stand firm without standing rigid.
Indeed, Mr Kinnock did try to shame Mrs Thatcher during Questions on Tues- day, and did it quite well. But, as I have suggested, embarrassing the Government is, for him, a secondary consideration.
Charles Moore
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