Great Britain: Benefit of the Doubt

The British Labor Party’s official song is more auld hat than Auld Lang Syne. At the party’s annual conference in Brighton last week, the leaders as usual linked hands on the platform and (to the tune known in the U.S. as Maryland, My Maryland) chanted the quaint lyrics:

The People’s Flag is deepest red.

It shrouded oft our martyred dead . . .

There were no Socialist martyrs at Brighton, but Prime Minister Harold Wilson, just back from Washington, had a hard time keeping that old Red Flag flying and showing just the right hue. Wilson’s major troubles are two: 1) the continuing, alarming economic crisis, and 2) opposition from his own left, or deep-red wing.

Master Sinner. In deference to Labor’s unilateralist disarmers, Wilson had pledged that, once in office, he would not only scrap Britain’s independent deterrent but also oppose the U.S.-backed multi-lateral force. However, in his talks with President Johnson in Washington, he had, in fact, not so much opposed MLF as proposed a way of enlarging and diluting it. In reporting on his talks to the party conference, Wilson hedged: he had not committed Britain to MLF. he said, and had entirely “reserved” his position. This was patently less than the whole truth, but enough to mollify Labor’s dissidents for the time being. Rasped militant Left-Winger Ian Mikardo: “We are giving the government the benefit of any doubts which exist—but that is not the same as saying there is no doubt.”

In Parliament later. Wilson unveiled the proposed ingredients of his suggested Atlantic Nuclear Force: most of Britain’s aging V-bombers: the four or five Polaris submarines Britain is building with U.S. assistance; and even some mixed manning, but—hopefully—not on surface vessels, “the least desirable” solution. Wilson suggested that the U.S. add a like number of its own submarines. He would also like to include some U.S.-based intercontinental Minuteman missiles and West Germany-based Pershing short-range missiles, both to be mix-manned. German influence would be much less than in the original MLF, a welcome feature to the anti-German left wing. The whole setup would be commanded by a vague “single authority,” in which all member nations would have a veto.

In the House of Commons, Opposition Leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home sharply pointed up the schizophrenia of Wilson’s position: “If ownership of nuclear weapons is a sin, we do not gain absolution by appointing a master sinner to deploy the weapons for us, or by joining a syndicate which deals in these weapons.” Home added that with “eight or nine fingers on the safety catch, the force would be almost totally incredible as a deterrent.”

Sugared Pill. Wilson won a grudging vote of confidence on defense policy, but he faced worse domestic issues. Despite promises of swift progress toward a just, efficient society, Labor’s New Jerusalem seemed dishearteningly remote. When pledged pension boosts had to be postponed until spring, Wilson blamed the aftereffects of Tory red tape. Last week Minister for Economic Affairs George Brown flatly contradicted that version, confessed that he had vetoed the increases because Britain simply could not afford them at present. Most of Labor’s other campaign promises were imperiled by a continuing ebb of confidence in the pound (see WORLD BUSINESS) that forced the government to postpone repayment of $187.6 million due on U.S.-Canadian loans.

Wilson announced that Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin will visit Britain early next year on his first Western trip since taking power in October. Wilson himself plans to go to Moscow. But international ambitions will hardly keep Labor’s Red flag flying if in the meantime Britain goes bankrupt.