Happy Return

Tony Benn wins a by-election

It was the largest field ever in British electoral history, and with 17 candidates in the race, the ceremonial reading of the results droned on and on. But Chesterfield's returning officer dutifully completed the list, noting without so much as a smile that Pop Singer Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party had won 178 votes and College Student Giancarlo Piccaro of the Official Acne Party (its avowed aim: eradication of the skin disorder) had somehow picked up 15 votes. The Conservative candidate, Nicholas Bourne, polled a disappointing 15%, while Max Payne, representing the Liberal-Social Democratic alliance, came in with 35%.

At the head of the pack was the Labor Party's Tony Benn, 58, spiritual leader of its militant left wing. Nine months after losing his Bristol seat in last year's general election, Benn was on his way back to Parliament, taking 46.5% of the Chesterfield by-election vote.

Throughout the three-week campaign in the north Midlands mining and market town, Benn had stressed such traditional Labor issues as jobs and health care, avoiding any reference to his more radical positions. These include his firm opposition to the House of Lords (he legally renounced his title of Viscount Stansgate in 1963) and Britain's participation in NATO and the European Community. But on one issue Benn was unable to contain himself. Charging that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was planning to "destroy all unions," he condemned the government's decision to ban union membership at the supersecret Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham, 99 miles northwest of London, as "a major attack on civil liberties."

The government move, announced in late January, was a reaction to a series of small, short work stoppages in recent years at the intelligence facility, Britain's equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).* Arguing that union membership meant divided loyalties--one Thatcher aide insisted that "the union movement in this country is totally unprincipled"--the government gave Cheltenham's 8,000 employees three choices:

accept a one-time $1,500 payment and tear up union cards; retain union membership but agree to be moved to less sensitive jobs elsewhere; or acknowledge that starting March 1, anyone could be fired without compensation.

The ultimatum triggered an outcry from the Labor Party and the unions. Len Murray, general secretary of the powerful Trades Union Congress, declared that Thatcher was "accusing every union member--millions of British men and women--of being disloyal." The protest culminated in a half-day strike last week by thousands of civil servants and public service employees, and a brief stoppage of the national press. Criticism welled up even in the Conservative Party and in pro-Tory newspapers. But by week's end the Prime Minister had won her point and, in the process, inflicted a major defeat on the labor movement:

more than 90% of the Cheltenham facility's employees took the $1,500 and dropped their union affiliation.

The Tories' efforts at Chesterfield were less successful. While the party sent some of its biggest guns to help Candidate Bourne, the effort seemed less than wholehearted. From the Conservatives' viewpoint, a victory that would have added one more seat to an existing 144-seat majority in the House of Commons was only a little more desirable than the prospect of seeing Benn re-elected and reigniting left-right tensions in opposition ranks.

Said Liberal Leader David Steel: "I don't think Thatcher is exactly in tears that Benn is going to be around messing things up for the Labor Party for the next four years."

Labor dispatched scores of M.P.s to campaign for Benn, but Party Leader Neil Kinnock must have been of two minds about the Benn candidacy. Labor could not afford to lose in Chesterfield, a party stronghold for nearly 50 years. But Kinnock has worked hard during the past five months to smooth over the left-right split in the party, and Benn's return to the Commons might jeopardize that achievement. In the end, the result was probably just what Kinnock needed: a Labor victory, but narrow enough to keep Benn from claiming a mandate for left-wing insurrection.

"Like other members of the U.S. intelligence Establishment, NSA workers are forbidden to join unions.