UK: SEDGEFIELD: TONY BLAIR PROFILE

(29 Sep 1996) English/Nat

Britain's opposition Labour party meet next week for their last annual conference before a General Election.

Their leader, Tony Blair, who's tipped to be the next Prime Minister with a 20 point lead in the polls - has come under fire from both inside and outside his party for what some see as his "autocratic" leadership style.

He spoke about this and his hopes for the future in an exclusive interview with APTV.

This is Tony Blair country. It's the view from the window at his home in the North of England.

New houses have sprouted beside those more than a century old. Grass has grown over what were once busy coal mining pits.

It symbolises the sort of radical change that Blair - seen here at a poster launch with local party members - wants to effect in Britain.

The change he's been striving for since 1983, when he was elected as a Member of Parliament in this constituency, is to take his party to the centre ground - appealing to a wider range of voters than the more class-based socialism that marked the Labour party under previous leaders.

Distancing Labour from its links with trade unions, not being perceived as a high-tax, high-spending party and looking to the middle class, former pro-Thatcher voters are all central to Blair's cause.

This has drawn stinging criticism from more traditional elements within his party who say he doesn't consult enough.

Speaking from his home in Sedgefield, County Durham, Blair defended his leadership style.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Firstly I believe that people want political leadership. You don't do this arrogantly - just on a sort of whimsy decide in some sort of macho way you're going to be a strong leader, but people need direction and the Labour party lost the last four elections and frankly anybody who looks at the situation there and says there's no changes needed, well I don't think of them as being a very serious person about their political beliefs. So we've had to make big change. We've been right to make it. We are now a broad based party, we're not at the behest of every pressure group that makes demands on us."
SUPER CAPTION: Tony Blair, Labour Party Leader

Blair dismisses dissenters from within his own party in a forthright fashion.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Of course there are elements that disagree with that process of change. I think, one, it is really a younger generation that's come on in the Labour party and they are with change and modernisation and that's where the centre is, and two, there's no intellectual case against what we're doing."
SUPER CAPTION: Tony Blair, Labour Party Leader

The election campaign could be as many as seven months away ,but already it has turned nasty with the ruling Conservative party portraying Blair as a man with demon eyes, hiding the truth as the party that wants to raise taxes.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Without wishing to insult American politics in any way at all I think it would be unfortunate if our politics turned into a blast of negative campaigning because it's so destructive in the end. Nobody really believes that I am akin to the devil and if I say the same about John Major nobody really believes that. It's a very sterile and puerile form of debate."
SUPER CAPTION: Tony Blair, Labour Party Leader

Blair stresses the need for Britain to retain its strong ties with the United States and suggested Britain could play the role of mediator between America and the European Union.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
SUPER CAPTION: Tony Blair, Labour Party Leader


SOUNDBITE: (English)
SUPER CAPTION: Tony Blair, Labour Party Leader



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