New Zealander key man in British Labour Party

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 34

New Zealander key man in British Labour Party

By BRIAN MOONEY NZPA-Reuter London A New Zealand-born lawyer and diplomat who says he turned to politics in shocked reaction to the British class system has become the mastermind in the Opposition Labour Party’s plans to oust the Conservative Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. Mr Bryan Gould, aged 47, Labour’s election campaign manager and a leading party spokesman on economic affairs, sees his colonial roots as a plus in Britain’s inward-looking political world. “There are positive advantages to being someone who takes a clearer view of society than somebody born and brought up in it,” Mr Gould said. “It is much easier for me in a sense to judge what is required. I am not very conscious of my New Zealand roots but see that they must have an impact on my outlook.” Mr Gould, who settled in Britain after studying at university in New Zealand and spent four years as a diplomat in the British foreign service before taking up a political career, even draws on. New Zealand’s sporting image to promote his vision of Labour’s bid for power. He accepts comparisons with New Zealand’s challenge for the America’s Cup yachting trophy, in which New Zealand came from nowhere, only to lose in the semi-finals. “The image of the

America’s Cup is a quite favourable one in the sense that a relatively small country managed a credible challenge right up to the last minute,” he said.

“What is important for us is to be in there contending. Providing we go into the election contending, we think we can make ground and attain our objective of an overall majority.” Labour is at present languishing well behind the ruling Conservatives in opinion polls but Mr Gould believes that the party can recover ground and overhaul the Conservatives once the political debate shifts to its policies in the run-up to the election, which is expected either in June or later.

Mr Gould, one of a new generation under the party leader, Mr Neil Kinnock, who seeks to shed Labour’s cloth cap image and create a modern, moderate socialism attractive to both middle and working class voters, sees this as his main task.

He played a key role in working on one of the major planks of Labour’s election manifesto — a pledge to create a million new jobs within two years of taking office. Mr Gould says he was drawn to the Labour Party by the contrasts of extreme poverty and powerful wealth which he encountered in the 1960 s when he first came to Britain. His family emi-

grated from Britain for New Zealand last century. “I was already in a fairly radical frame of mind, but when I arrived here I was exposed to a class-based society and slum housing. It was an eye opener to me, and I moved very rapidly to Labour.” He studied for a further degree in law at Oxford. He finally committed himself to Labour when he saw an apparent attempt by Britain’s financial centre, the City of London, to sabotage the Labour Government elected in 1964.

“I was outraged at what

seemed to me to be the attempt by the City, the run on sterling and so on, to frustrate people, to overturn the decision of the electorate.

“I went in as my personal gesture and joined the Labour Party at that point.”

Mr Gould takes particular pride in his party’s programme to reduce unemployment. “There has been virtually no attack on this programme because when people run it through their computer models, the computer tells them that it works.

“But it is very hard to

get a debate on the programme because people do not want to talk about it.”

This highlights a deep paradox in Mrs Thatcher’s Britain.

Opinion polls consistently rate unemployment — just over three million people were registered out of work in March — as the number one concern among the electorate.

Yet after eight years of “Thatcherism,” many Britons seem to accept that high unemployment, perhaps like Mrs Thatcher, is here to stay.