Britain: The Other Election

...The result has been to reinforce those who have argued all along that Britain dare not put all her diplomatic eggs in Washington's basket and must have the freedom of maneuver to follow an independent diplomacy...

...policy in its involvement in Southeast Asia, or in the coming negotiations with Russia, it is hard to see how it is likely to be helped by throwing away such a valuable trump card...

...This diminishes Britain's bargaining power with Russia, and also makes her totally dependent upon the United States for her defense— an abdication of national power that no British political party can espouse lightly...

...Whether he persuaded the Russian Premier—who once said he would vote for the Tories if he were English—that a Labor government need not necessarily worsen Anglo-Soviet relations remains a matter for conjecture...

...The dispute erupted over the government's decision to allow Chrysler to buy a major share of the British-owned Rootes corporation...

...Unwilling to alienate the unilaterialists within his own party, Wilson has paid lip-service to nuclear abdication without ever definitely committing himself...

...Although a man of charm, simplicity and considerable intelligence, he has so far been unable to fill Macmillan's shoes as a figure of world or even of national importance...

...Here the Tories are clearly on the offensive, for they can appeal both to British pride and to British selfinterest...

...Nobody expected Wilson to come back from his whirlwind trip to the Kremlin with a signed treaty of eternal friendship and disarmament...

...With the Russians panting for a détente with the West that will allow them to defend their Asian borders against an expansionist China, a visit to the Kremlin is about as daring as one to the White House or the Quirinale—and considerably less so than a visit to the Elysee...

...Time is running short for Sir Alec, who has yet to establish his personal authority within the Conservative party after the bloody struggle for the succession...

...TRANSATLANTIC CONTRAST Britain: The Other Election By Ronald Steel London Even the British, who are lumbering toward a general election in October with all the excitement of a woman facing her 40th birthday party, seem to have their attention riveted on San Francisco rather than on Whitehall...

...Labor immediately sprang to the attack, charging that the Tories were selling out the British motor industry to American monopolists while refusing to allow the British people to own their own industries through nationalization...

...Both are ardent supporters of the new détente with the Soviet Union...

...The major dispute over foreign affairs is not between the two parties at all, but between the world as it looks from London and as it looks from Washington...

...The voters have been fairly well conditioned to the prospect of a Labor victory, and unless they can be disabused of that notion, a prophecy of this sort is very likely to become a self-fulfilling one...

...Both are, finally, highly skeptical over America's lingering obsession with the "international Communist conspiracy," think China should be admitted to the UN, and would have British play a greater role as mediator between the industrialized nations and the emerging ones...

...Both are opposed to Washington's plan for a multilateral NATO atomic force (the MLF), and both want to hold on to Britain's bases in Cyprus, Aden and Singapore...

...The spectre of Barry Goldwater in the White House sends shivers up the British spine, and if he romps home with the nomination at San Francisco next week, we can expect Tories and Laborites to be falling over one another championing Britain's independence of Washington—nuclear and otherwise...

...European politicians go off to Moscow—and to Washington, too, for that matter—the way their American counterparts visit Disneyland or address the National Association of Manufacturers...

...If Britain has any hope of influencing U.S...

...For this, credit seems to be divided between that illmatched duo, Barry Goldwater and Harold Wilson—the former for drumming up some popular excitement for the prospect of elections in general...

...The fact that he returned without having made any gaffes that an eager Tory opposition could pounce upon was proof in itself that the trip was a success...

...Fortified by the Rootes counterattack, the Tories gingerly approached the big foreign affairs debate in Parliament last month in hopes of giving the Socialists a bloody nose over their ambiguous policies toward defense and relations with Continental Europe...

...Sniffing victory just around the bend, Wilson is a cautious man, and cautious men do not engage in political adventures...

...The ruling Tories and the officehungry Laborites have barely even begun to warm up for their own campaign, which does not officially get rolling until early September...

...Both the Tories and the Laborites want to stop the spread of nuclear weapons...

...becomes increasingly involved in Southeast Asia, Labor is likely to find itself taking up the Tory banner of nuclear self-reliance as the only alternative to total dependence on a U.S...

...There was no argument between Sir Alec and his Labor challengers over the receding dangers of war in Europe and the developing opportunities for a reconciliation between Russia and the West...

...In any threat by China which may start a nuclear war," he observed without raising an eyebrow in the Parliament, "the interests of the Soviet Union and the West would be as one...

...Barry Goldwater's phenomenal drive for the Republican nomination, which will come to a crescendo one way or the other next week, has practically monopolized both the public press and private conversations...

...Harold Wilson thus established himself as a serious leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition...

...But there is already a revolt brewing on the Left among Laborites who are alarmed by his defense of the government's action in Aden and who fear that, once in office, he will hold on to the Bomb after all...

...But an independent diplomacy means an independent defense force, and here Labor's yearnings for nuclear abstinence run smack into the realities of national power...

...By and large, he betting still favors Labor, and the public opinion polls—for whatever they are worth—indicate a Labor majority of somewhere around 60 seats...

...Sometimes, in fact, it is hard to remember that the British themselves are supposed to be involved in the throes of democracy's most important ritual: a national election...

...In fact, it was nearly irrelevant, because now that the steam has been taken out of the cold war nobody gets very excited about a trip to Moscow any more...

...For the first time in a good many months, confidence in a certain Labor victory seems to be shaken, and there are even whispered predictions that the Conservatives might squeak through with a 25seat margin...

...is making a brave—and to some degree successful—display of absolute confidence in its ultimate triumph...

...and both have an abiding faith in the United Nations...

...diplomacy whose traumas it finds incomprehensible...

...the latter for going off to Moscow to remind Khrushchev, and by extension the British voters, that there is a ready and eager alternative to Tory government...

...Recent U.S...

...Whether or not cautious men win elections remains to be seen...

...He called for recognition of the fact that "many of the conflicts in Asia and Africa . . . have nothing whatever to do with international Communism," but rather "arise out of the political instability which is an inevitable consequence of the revolutionary changes now sweeping Africa and Asia, and perhaps shortly to spread to Latin America...

...Indeed, the Labor party leader was forever stepping lively in an effort to show that Khrushchev could not pull any wool over his eyes...

...Ronald Steel, author of The End of Alliance and a frequent contributor, is currently The New Leader's roving European correspondent...

...But there remains an air of vague disbelief in these various polls, and even Labor itself seems uncertain of victory, although it...

...both show a willingness to follow Washington's lead in negotiating with the Russians...

...The Tories know better than anyone what a tough road they have to plow, and in the recent Parliamentary blow-up over American ownership of British industry they found an ideal opportunity to pin the label of jingoistic xenophobia on the Laborites...

...It is their way of showing they have an ear to the ground and one foot in the door where power lies...

...Wilson knows as well as anyone, of course, the consequences of giving up the British bomb: It not only throws Britain back upon Washington's good graces for her defense, but for her diplomacy as well...

...Speaking for Labor, shadow defense minister Denis Healey gave an eloquent presentation of the case for admitting China to the UN...

...The shaking of this public confidence (regardless of whatever private doubts may lie behind it) that Labor will take over the reins of power in October is the most difficult, and also the most crucial, task lying before Sir Alec DouglasHome during these last three months before the election...

...Debates in the House of Commons have been droning on with their customary regularity, but it is only during the past few weeks that it has been possible to sniff even a hint of pre-electoral fever in the air...

...Denied—or spared, if you will—the theatricality of our own primaries, the parliamentary system provides precious little fodder for exciting the voters until just before they go to the polls...

...The attack, more passionate than wise, collapsed to Labor's embarrassment when the government's spokesmen demolished their critics by pointing out that control of Rootes would remain in British hands, that the inflow of Chrysler money supported the pound sterling and would help modernize the British motor industry, and that it was better for U.S...

...The fact that Harold Wilson has not done so either has not appreciably cased Sir Alec's task for the simple reason that he has the power and publicity of office and Wilson does not...

...The Prime Minister even went so far as to warn against pressing the Russians too hard on disarmament "because faced with the Chinese, they cannot make up their minds yet whether they want disarmament at all," and he foresaw the day when the Russians would join with the West to control a belligerent China...

...threats to extend the war into North Vietnam, and perhaps even into China itself, have been greeted with an incredulity verging on horror...

...While Harold Wilson talks of giving up Britain's nuclear deterrent and re-negotiating the Nassau agreements under which Macmiilan acquired Polaris missiles for British atomic submarines, he is finding that every concession he makes to the unilateral disarmers on the Labor Party Left leaves him wide open to attack from the Tories for giving away Britain's credit card to the councils of the great powers...

...As the campaign proceeds, and as the U.S...

...It was a credential-showing trip skillfully handled, although its impact on the British electorate seems to have been marginal at best...

...Both Conservatives and Labor are puzzled and deeply alarmed by America's immersion into the morass of Southeast Asia, and have refrained from outright criticism à la française onlv because Britain needs U.S...

...The result, however, was pretty much of a draw, with the two sides in fairly close agreement on the basic lines of British foreign policy...

...But in the catalogue of virtues cherished by the British Labor party, such unorthodoxy in foreign affairs is not easily found, and one is better off not to waste any time searching for it...

...support for its semi-colonial commitments in Malaysia, Aden and Cyprus...

...corporations to invest in Britain than in her Continental competitors...

...At a time when American businessmen troop in and out of Premier Khrushchev's office at 15minute intervals, Harold Wilson might have made a bigger splash on public opinion—both in Britain and abroad—had he gone off to talk to de Gaulle, or even to Nasser...