Labour Party faces 'embarrassment of riches'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JAN. 8. Either the Labour Party is leaking like a sieve or journalistic enterprises has suddenly achieved new heights so that every hack in town knows all about the ``secret'' donations to the party - down to who gave how much and when and whether or not any strings were attached.

What initially looked like a one-off case of a ``mystery'' donation, later owned up by the publishing tycoon Lord Paul Hamlyn, is threatening to turn into a never-ending soap with disclosures turning up at the rate of at least one a day; and since the Hamlyn case, at least three more cases have come to light, excluding a sensational Sunday Times revelation about a £ 2-million donation from an unknown source in the tax haven of Bermuda. In what is described as an ``embarrassment of riches'', the Labour is reported to have already collected nearly £ 10 millions and with elections still four months away, the figure could well go through the roof at Millbank, the Labour headquarters in London.

For the first time, Labour is set to go into a general elections with nearly twice as much in the kitty as the Conservatives once regarded as unbeatable in the funding stakes. Given their own none-too-clean record of collecting donations when they were in power, the Tories have resisted the temptation of calling the pot black except to accuse Labour of ``hypocrisy'' and to demand that it come clean on the sources of its funding. The only case which they regard as potentially ``exploitable'' is a donation by the property developer, Mr. Robert Bourne, to whom the Government is selling the Millennium Dome, allegedly at a throwaway price.

It is alleged that the last instalment of his £- 100,000 donation coincided with the Government's decision to accept his bid for the Dome after a Japanese bank pulled out of it last November. The Tories plan to raise the issue in Parliament this week.

Meanwhile, Labour's own backbenchers are reported to be upset over the party's growing dependence on a corporate donors in what is seen as a departure from the party's tradition of encouraging individual donations through unions and activists. They fear that, apart from marginalising the party's committed grassroots activists, this would make the Government vulnerable to pressures from corporate backers.

A former Labour Minister, Mr. Peter Kilfoyle, told The Guardian that reliance on big money would raise questions about its influence on decision-making. In the coming weeks, it seems the party leadership would come under increased pressure from its own MPs and union leaders to resist the temptation of big money and save itself from the charges of sleaze and corruption which proved to be the undoing of the Tories.

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Section  : International
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