Britain: Richard III Rides Again

All over Brighton last week, posters proclaimed: BRITAIN WOULD BE BETTER

OFF WITH THE CONSERVATIVES. As 4,000

Tories gathered at the seaside resort for the party’s annual meeting, however, they were beginning to wonder whether they would ever get a chance to prove it. The idea that the Conservatives could lose the next election, which Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson might call as early as next spring, once seemed absurd. Not any longer.

Only last spring, the Tories enjoyed an astonishing 25% lead over Labor in the opinion polls. Last week a new poll by London’s Opinion Research Centre showed that their lead has dwindled to a scant 4%. According to the latest Gallup poll, 43% of the country is satisfied with Wilson—his highest rating in that survey since 1967.

The Extra Mart. As the party on the rise, Labor now has a psychological edge. Wilson’s stock has been buoyed by Britain’s current balance-of-payments surplus, the first in seven years, and by his cocky show of confidence two weeks ago at Labor’s own annual meeting in Brighton. At the Tory conference, one speaker compared Wilson to Richard III, he of the “crooked back” and “evil mind” who rallied his troops and “rode off full of hope to his doom in Bosworth Field.” In the end, that fate may befall Edward Richard George Heath, 53, who in five years as the Tories’ leader has not yet impressed his own party, much less the British electorate. He is another example of the bland, almost face less leadership that seems to prevail in many other parts of the world as well (see the ESSAY).

Much of the time at Brighton, Ted Heath was almost the extra man. Delegates cheered such thunderers as Extremist Enoch Powell, known in some quarters as “the literate George Wallace” for his racial stance. Only on the closing day did Heath manage to score some points of his own.

Unlike Wilson, a clever, sharp-tongued and very partisan politician, Heath usually arouses little more than yawns. The conservative squirearchy, which still dominates much of Tory politics, is not particularly delighted that their leader is a Kentish carpenter’s son who got through Balliol College on an organ scholarship. Nor does Heath’s modest background win him friends in working-class districts—not when the single, silver-haired politician is known to be devoted to music and a 34-ft. sloop he races with public-school friends.

At Brighton, too, not everyone was following Heath’s tune. He is campaigning as a moderate “Man of Principle” dedicated chiefly to reducing prices, taxes and strikes. The last issue gained special pungency as the wildcat walkout of 6,000 London “dustmen” entered its third week, spread to other cities and yielded Everests of offal similar to those of New York’s 1968 garbage strike. On one issue, however, old-line Tories severely tarnished the progressive image that the party is attempting to acquire. They voted overwhelmingly to end Britain’s five-year experimental suspension of capital punishment, thus reviving the Conservatives’ old reputation as the “flogging and hanging party.”

If an election were held now, the Tories would probably defeat Labor. The Conservatives’ sharp drop in the opinion polls could even be good for the party, as London’s Economist points out, “if its complacency is punctured.” If it is not, the Tories could succeed in throwing away an election they once considered a sure thing.