Burdens for Britain

...And anyway, Wilson said, the Polaris submarine program was too far advanced to cancel...

...Embracing Europe as the issue on which he will probably fight the next election, Sir Alec has reshuffled his shadow cabinet to promote three leading pro-Europeans: Reginald Maudling, Edward Heath and Christopher Soames...

...Britain still continues to suffer from the same old problems: economic stagnancy, festering pockets of unemployment, an overinflated currency, racial disturbances, a Bomb nobody can find a use for, and semi-colonial headaches from Cyprus to Singapore...

...But then the Tories are so disorganized and badly led that they hardly pose much of a challenge for the time being...

...government takes the same view about Malaysia...

...But then the determination to retain the pound as a world currency has, for Labor, become a kind of monetary replacement for the dwindling independent nuclear deterrent...

...He also has another good reason for carrying Washington's spears in Vietnam, for Britain too has an Asian headache...

...It is, in fact, one of the entertaining ironies of current affairs that the only other nation as adamantly opposed to European political federation as Gaullist France should be Britain itself...

...How Labor could persuade Peking that it would use its Bomb to protect India, when it had been arguing for years that the deterrent was too puny even to dissuade Russia from attacking Britain herself, was something the Prime Minister neglected to explain...

...for its defense, its foreign commitments, and even the stability of its own currency, the Wilson government has mortgaged its freedom of action and with it a good deal of its political influence in the world...

...With the exception of a few dedicated pro-Europeans in the Cabinet like the talented aviation minister Roy Jenkins and the promising postmaster-general Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the Labor party is burdened with a suspicion of foreigners bordering on distaste...

...Unless he can pull some rabbits out of his pipe, his prospects are slim, indeed, for steel nationalization has few enthusiasts even among Labor MPS...

...They could hardly have been persuaded otherwise by the spectacle of Wilson's rushing off to Washington to pay homage within hours after moving into Downing Street, by his pathetic attempt to peddle a watered-down version of the MLF after even the Johnson administration abandoned it, and by his current acquiescence to U.S...

...margin of five parliamentary seats by which Labor squeezed into office last October has been cut to three by ungrateful voters at by-elections...

...No sooner had he assembled his Cabinet, composed of virtually everyone who had ever done him a favor, than the Bank of England ran out of gold reserves and the pound threatened to collapse...

...The price, however, was steep: The brakes had to be put on the economy by raising the bank rate to an investment-squelching seven per cent and levying a 15 per cent surtax on imports...

...In fact, with their Kiplingesque calls for a British military presence "east of Suez," Wilson and his defense minister Denis Healey are beginning to sound like parodies of the Tory empire sentimentalists they so mercilessly, and justly, ridiculed in the past...

...With only a three-vote margin, that could topple the government...

...Never once during all the long furor over Britain's economic and defense troubles has he ever shown the slightest interest in seeking a solution across the Channel...

...Commenting on the collapse of the Anglo-Soviet talks on convening another Geneva conference on Indochina, he said, "We in Britain support the right of South Vietnam to peace and freedom, on its merits...

...As if the old problems weren't enough, Wilson is faced with attrition and rebellion in his own ranks...

...The Liberals have threatened to vote against him, and even some of the Right-wing members of his own party...

...Together with lain MacLeod and Sir Edward Boyle, they pose a menacing Tory front bench, and if one of these pretenders should manage to push Home off the throne, the Tories have a fair chance of squeezing back into power in the general election Wilson will almost certainly have to call this year...

...Those pressing responsibilities east of Suez, which Wilson has suddenly found to be so vital, are also given as the reason for Labor's about-face on defense policy...

...Without the U.S...

...policy in Vietnam...

...and I am sure that the U.S...

...Europe is learning to get along without Britain, and the British-except for a few eccentrics on such journals as The Economist-could hardly care less...

...Suspicion, for that matter, runs deep on both sides of the Channel now that the Continental Socialists have discovered that a Labor government is even less eager to embrace Europe than were the Tories...

...While Wilson's position on Vietnam may be distressing, one does not have to scratch very deep in search of an explanation...

...On the phone to central banks in Washington, Bonn and Zurich, the Labor government managed to assemble a record $3 billion loan in whirlwind time...

...Wilson has yet to show a fraction of the spirit that led Atlee to argue in 1950 against an extension of the Korean War and that prompted even Eden in 1954 to hold Dulles back from sending U.S...

...Treasury's willingness to underwrite the value of the pound, there would have been no alternative to devaluation last November, nor would there be now if an irritated Lyndon Johnson should pull the rug out from under the Exchequer...

...It could come as early as this summer, if Wilson carries through his pledge to honor Labor dogma by demanding the renationalization of the steel industry...

...He has already swallowed the bombing of North Vietnam in exchange for U.S...

...While Wilson stays up late making his midnight calls of fidelity to Washington, the Tories seem to be turning themselves into Gaullists...

...But a cautious man, and-it is worth remembering-an economist at that, Wilson is taking no chances...

...Dependent on the U.S...

...On the contrary, his sentiments run just the other way, as has been demonstrated by his frantic efforts to slide out of the Concorde air-plane agreements with France, his decision to replace the TSR-2 with American planes rather than joining in a European consortium, and his recent veto of a new approach to the Common Market...

...policy in Vietnam and his decision to hold on to the nuclear deterrent, while the Right wing threatens to pull out if he pushes ahead with his threat to renationalize the steel industry...

...Which may be what Wilson wants, for he could then accuse the Tories of "obstructionism" and appeal to the British voter's sense of "fair play" to win a bigger mandate...

...Stuck with semi-colonial holdings in Asia and the Middle East, bogged down in a war in Yemen in support of the royalists against Egyptian-led rebels, determinedly trying to keep its nuclear air bases in Cyprus, its naval base in Singapore and its Nelsonian presence in Gibraltar, Britain is not in a very good position to preach the virtues of neutralism for the nations of the "third world...

...Grudgingly, they are coming around to the oft-repeated view of de Gaulle that the British still have their heart, and their chips, across the Atlantic rather than across the Channel...

...The import surtax, applied without so much as a warning peep to Britain's six partners in the European Free Trade Association, wiped out in one sweep most of the tariff reductions EFTA has laboriously achieved over the past several years...

...Locked out of Europe, an obsequious second to Washington, burdened with an antiquated economy, a feudal social system and a fumbling government which has disillusioned most of its supporters, Britain waits poignantly for a politician worthy of her problems...

...soldiers and atom bombs to help the French fight their colonial war in Indochina...

...But whatever their hurt pride, it is an experience which seems to have caused them more relief than pain-particularly in the Labor party, where Hugh Gaitskell's emotional diatribes against the Common Market have been succeeded by Wilson's equally devastating indifference...

...Wilson can be thankful that he faces no more formidable nemesis than Sir Alec...

...In its parochialism it has become the last refuge of Little Englandism...

...Trying to keep Malaysia out of Sukarno's hands, the British need all the help they can get, as Michael Stewart, the new foreign secretary who succeeded the hapless Patrick Gordon Walker after he lost his second try for a seat in parliament, explained the situation with disarming directness last month...

...Faced with this crisis, Wilson could have either devalued the pound from its $2.80 exchange rate, or persuaded foreign banks to bail him out...

...Labor's Left wing is in revolt against Wilson's support of U.S...

...It was, from any point of view, a singular spectacle to observe Britain's first Socialist prime minister in 13 years put himself in plaster to the Bank of England and sacrifice economic growth to the international prestige of the pound...

...He is probably wrong, since the dollar is in almost as much trouble as the pound, and if Sterling is devalued, the dollar might not be far behind...

...After six months in office, the bloom is already off the prime minister's rosy cheeks, and the hard problems inherited from the departed Tories-who for their own sake got out of office just in time-have given a sour note to Labor's promised "Hundred Days" utopia...

...Sounding like a broken Voice of America recording, it is not surprising that Harold Wilson's voice is not carrying much weight in Moscow, Peking or Hanoi...

...Trying to defend his conversion to a rebellious group of Labor MP unilateralists who thought getting rid of the Bomb meant getting rid of the Bomb, Wilson explained that the whole situation had changed radically now that China has entered the nuclear club-an eventuality which presumably had not occurred to him previously-and India and Pakistan require British nuclear protection if they are to be dissuaded from building their own Bombs (which they would probably use to threaten one another...

...Or in Paris and Brussels, for that matter...

...Coming into office on a campaign platform virtually pledged to scuttle the British Bomb as soon as it could be dismantled, the Prime Minister has now become the apostle of the new Laborite school of "nuclear maturity" which preaches that the British must put their personal feelings aside and keep the Bomb after all in order to carry out their fair share of the defense of the free world...

...The British, however, have somewhat less to be thankful for as they muddle through on their credit and their own good humor, having replaced Home's ineptitude for Wilson's stumbling opportunism...

...But even Continental Socialists like Paul Henri Spaak and Jean Monnet are getting bored with that game, and are now pushing for Common Market political talks without waiting for Britain...

...The hair-breadth Ronald Steel, author of The End of Alliance, is the new leader's roving European correspondent...

...Having adopted the old Tory defense policy with only the tiniest fig leaf of Socialist jargon to cover its nakedness, Wilson is now stuck with finding a way of paying for it without making himself a prisoner of Lyndon Johnson...

...Rarely has mutual back-scratching been described with such admirable clarity...

...help in Malaysia and Yemen, but there is a limit to how far he can go without facing major rebellion within his own ranks from those Labor MPS who have been demanding something more than Sir Alec Douglas-Home with a pipe...

...The handling of the surtax was, to be sure, a perfect expression of Wilson's feelings about Europe in general...

...Rightly or wrongly, Wilson is scared that the pound will come crashing down on his head if he takes an independent line on Vietnam...

...The Prime Minister is in hock to Washington up to his ears...

...Locked out of a club it didn't particularly want to join in the first place-despite Macmillan's negotiations at Brussels, the British were a long way from ready to take the plunge-Britain can enjoy the benefits of condolence while urging her friends to keep the door open for her, thus blocking the development of the Common Market into a political union...

...After having blasted Sir Alec Douglas-Home for supporting Washington's role in the Vietnamese war when he was leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Wilson now finds the view marvelously different from the other side of the aisle...

...It did little good to the already shaky morale of the Outer Seven who have yet to be given a convincing reason why they should be expected to foot the bill for Britain's over-protected and inefficient industries...

...Challenged in Commons last month on his somersault of policy, the Prime Minister declared that the character' of the war had changed from "a spontaneous so-called nationalist rising" into an overt war of aggression by North Vietnam-a remark which even the Laborite New States­man minced no words in calling "sheer impudence...

...Although Wilson, with a touch of the Fabian revivalism that lies so close to the Labor party's heart, and a veneer of public relations inspired by the Kennedy campaign, has vowed to establish a New-ish Frontier on the banks of the old Thames, the Promised Land seems even farther away than ever...

...From his first day in office Wilson has had a bad time of it...

...The British admittedly had their fingers badly burned by de Gaulle at Brussels...

...Harold Wilson's new Labor government in Britain seems to be a victim of both...