Word: labor
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...S.D.P.'s principal founders, former Education Secretary Shirley Williams, 52, and onetime Transport Secretary William Rodgers, 54, lost their elections. If the Alliance won relatively few seats, however, it did claim 25% of the popular vote and could eventually become a formidable political force. The Alliance nearly outpolled Labor, which had 28% of the vote, while the Tories...
...election could not have offered voters a more dramatic choice. Britain was forced to decide between radical right and zealous left, with only the unproven Alliance trying to hold the center. The Labor Party's campaign manifesto called for pulling Britain out of the European Community, unilaterally banishing nucle ar weapons from British soil, launching a $17 billion job-creation program and nationalizing a clutch of key industries. The Conservative manifesto, on the other hand, pledged to do the opposite on just about every issue. Aside from staying in the European Community and keeping the missiles, the Tories vowed that...
...candidates could hardly be more different in style than Foot and Thatcher. The Labor Party leader looked and acted on the stump like an absent-minded professor: white hair often mussed, head bobbing right and left, tweed suits rumpled. Foot shambled amiably through the crowds, often throwing a comradely arm around a fan or bussing a comely voter...
...train of thought was occasionally derailed. At times he would start a sentence with a shout but end in a mumble. Quoting obscure passages from Jonathan Swift and reminiscing about old political battles, Foot seemed like a ghost from the past, "a kind of walking obituary for the Labor Party," as Guardian Columnist Peter Jenkins put it. In the dwindling days of the campaign, journalists began comparing Foot to another doomed figure, King Lear...
Never during the four-week campaign did it appear that the Tories would have a tight race, let alone lose. From the start, the polls showed Labor badly trailing the Conservatives, and as the weeks wore on, the margin grew as high as 21 points. Hobbled by a platform that many voters found impossibly ambitious and disturbingly leftist, Labor conducted a campaign in which almost nothing went right. Foot and Deputy Leader Denis Healey, 65, wrangled publicly over details of the party's controversial disarmament policies. That dispute had barely ended when former Prime Minister Callaghan, 71, revived...