(8 of 11)
The main reason for the relatively stoical mood with which Britons are taking the country's economic troubles is the elaborate social security system. A complicated infrastructure of welfare benefits, instituted by Clement Attlee's Labor government in 1945, cushions most families from real hunger or homelessness. In addition to severance pay and unemployment benefits, most workers with children are entitled to an income tax rebate, a rent rebate on public housing, and free milk and lunches at school.
However, Historian Asa Briggs, provost of Worcester College, Oxford, warns that "just because people are quiet now does not mean there will not be all-out trouble in the future." Lord Briggs believes that the era of rising expectations, in which the standard of living was expected to improve every year, is over, and the realization of this could lead to a leftist backlash. Says he: "Politics is all about being a little better off. If you can't have that, people may go in for wilder objectives like a real redistribution of income."
To judge from the increase in the Labor Party's popularity in the polls, some of the backlash may be under way. What better issue is there than hard times for a party that has traditionally been the champion of the worker? But Labor, caught in the throes of the worst internal split in its 80-year history, is hardly in a position to exploit it. Labor, in fact, seems in mortal danger of committing political suicide. On the one side is a noisy, growing claque of radical leftists, given to raising clenched fists and shouting Trotskyite slogans, who are maneuvering to capture the levers of party power (see following story). On the other is a handful of rising and ambitious M.P.s, accustomed to the prerogatives of Westminster corridors, who are threatening to bolt Labor and form a new centrist party.
These ideological divisions in the Labor Party are not new, but in the past the two sides have managed to coexist in dynamic tandem. The party's center-right dominated the real sources of power, the Commons and the Cabinet, where national policies are forged. The left, galvanized by the brilliant oratory of the late Aneurin Bevan, pursued its socialist goals through the giant trade unions. But the new left is no longer content with a passive role. When Callaghan resigned as Labor Party leader last fall, the left began to move in earnest to bring in one of its own. To stave off a party split in the fight for leadership, the M.P.s chose Michael Foot, 67, an amiable, cultivated Libertarian socialist in the old mode, with a reputation as a peacemaker.
The party had also adopted what to its right wing were two impossible positions: withdrawal of Britain from the European Community and a call for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Although he has long favored both positions, Foot sought to reassure the dissidents and pleaded with them to stay in the Labor fold. But then came a special one-day party conference in the London suburb of Wembley late last month to consider a rules change for choosing a party leader in the future. In the past, the party's mostly moderate members of Parliament held the exclusive right to choose the party leader. At the urging of the left, the party established an electoral college in which the combined power of the unions and the leftist constituency committees