Dog Days in Britain

...Six long years of Margaret Thatcher's rule appear to have con vinced even dedicated Tory voters, let alone everyone else, that thePrimeMinislerhasnol and will not put the country on the road lo hope and glory...

...Britons have always been numerous among these volunteers, as have the French, the Dutch and the Scandinavians...

...gions...

...The spoiled country weekends, the anguished Blackpool bed-and-breakfast landladies without payingguests to boss around, and the forlorn proprietors of deserted funfares have been contributing factors...

...In many ways, the fire has also gone out of the land over the last several years...

...Despite her promises and the brief, not overly glorious episode of the Falklands War, she has failed to reverse the pervasive sense of impotence...

...In each case, they had to go abroad to secure the investment capital needed for development and promotion...

...They are convinced that should this ever occur, they would be faced with disciplining hordes of mo tivationless recruits who have grown up believing that aBritish subject has a born right to receive a weekly dole check in the mail financed by North Sea oil revenues...

...Many non-Jewish young men and women volunteer, usually for about a year...

...Given the state of world economic conditions, the Prime Minister may not be able to make essential improvements in Britain's situation at present, but the population here desperately needs some flair, imagination and compassion at the top to excite, stimulate and encourage...

...Still others are out for a lark...

...They were symptoms of the fear, widespread among people in many basic industries, that they may be next" for the chop...

...City experts have been known to chart magnificently intricate paths to guide their foreign clients through the densest of commercial undergrowths...

...If the characteristic American attitude is a simplistic "can do," with Ramboalways lurking in the shadows to prove the point, the British mentality has become "no can do...

...Senior military officers here recoil in horror at suggestions that the nation's defense posture and unemployment statistics might be improved simultaneously if Britain followed the example of most European countries by drafting young men into the Armed Forces...

...If a basic institution, which in the past helped carry the Union Jack to the far corners of the globe, displays so little faith in its homeland, how can anyone expect such faith to be manifested by the unemployed and those barely clinging to their jobs...

...And it is not only the kibbutzim that are reluctant to welcome British young people these days...

...As one important trade unionist put it, "The fire has gone out of the men...

...The forecaster went onto tell his audience I lie grim news that he had been driven from the convivial sanctuary of his favorite pub by the rude comments of other regulars who held him responsible for the inclement elements...

...It has since developed into a very promising commercial proposition and may soon be bought up and promoted by American money...

...None is in the offing...

...When it was disclosed recently thai she had bought a$500,000-plus home in a South London up-market housing development boasting private.security arrangements, a golf course for husband Denis and various other trimmings, some observers here suggested she was preparing to give up custody of the Conservative Party and her government office as well...

...Money men in the City immediately concluded that even if it was not a fraud it would certainly be a risky investment, and therefore denied the inventor the capital he needed to expand his operation...

...British inventors—a small, tough and strangely enduring breed—have devised quite a few wonders of the modern age, including the medical scanner, the hovercraft, and vertical take-off aircraft...

...But the Israeli questioned by the BBC said that the British are not really wanted any longer: Unlike their Continental counterparts, they have of late proved themselves to be unreliable, undisciplined layabouts...

...The available alternatives have so far not proved terribly inspiring, either...

...Nonetheless, those same experts have for some time been too skeptical about Britain itself to support the products of local ingenuity and to ensure that they are made and exploited at home...

...Gargantuan multinational companies seek out its wizards to get advice on complicated problems of planning...

...Yet she and the Conservatives are not necessarily heading for disaster at the voting booths...

...The collapse earlier this year of the long coal walkout, andthefailureofun-ion leaders to persuade railway men to go on strike, were not signs of the rank and file accepting Thatcher's admonition that the nation must pull together for the common good...

...Economists and related soothsayers, for example, insist there is no way to make significant inroads into unemployment levels standing at slightly oxer 13 per cent for the whole nation and soaring well above 30 per cent in certain reNorman GELB writes regularly for THE NEW LEADER on British affairs...

...The sad irony is that the City's financial acumen is famous...

...Recent history is pockmarked wit h glaring examples of that kind of "prudence...

...But there are much more fundamental reasons for the disquiet and despair that now seem to have overtaken the British...

...Judging by her past and current performance, it is hard to expect that she will use the time to attempt anything more than cosmetic tinkering, nor does there appear to be any new Falklands-type crisis on the horizon that might revive national pride to her advantage...

...That wasquickly and firmly denied, to the regret of many Tories who see her not as a lame duck— in theory, of course, she could hold on to power should she win the next election—but as an albatross for reasons transcending politics...

...Foreign governments come to the "Square Mile" of downtown London to arrange massive loans for all sorts of vast projects...

...Some are charmed by the prospect of taking part in the experience of laboring on an Israeli agricultural collective...

...This distressing lack of confidence in Britain, in the British worker and in the British will to win persists despite the fact that Number Ten Downing Street has a tenant who fully shares the City's ostensible standards and principles...

...Not long ago, for instance, an Englishman designed an electrically operated device to repel mosquitoes and other flying insects...

...Before long, however, orders for the device poured in from no fewer than 39 countries...

...A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE Dog Days Britain BY NORMAN GELB London THIS IS the summer of our I discontent," the BBC JL weatherman declared dramatically as the season began fading into autumn with the same damp dreariness I hat has marked most days in England since storms wrecked the schedule of last June's tennis championship matches at Wimbledon...

...So, to be sure, have the Birmingham riots—the worst inner-city violence in the country since 1981—and the announcement that English soccer teams are being banned from competition on the Continent in retaliation for the criminal behavior of the fans who travel with them...

...Unfortunately, it is not an isolated case...

...Others are eager to lose themselves, just as young men once lost themselves in the French Foreign Legion...

...A short while ago, the BBC carried a disturbing radio interview with an official of an Israeli organization that processes young Europeans interested in working on a kibbutz...

...As a consequence, the country is repeatedly drained of good ideas, not to mention the industries and jobs they would have created...

...Thatcher has three years before she must call new general elections...

...Meanwhile, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution is spawning a generation of youngsters with no experience of holding down a job...

...Or perhaps the Japanese will get in first...

...A bad time has indeed been had by all the past three months, and not alone because of the uncooperative climate...

...As this factory goes to the wall or that enterprise "rationalizes" its operations, long-term employees are finding themselves suddenly out on the street and have little prospect of ever working again...

...At the moment better than 3 million citizens are getting these checks, raising the question of what will happen, as the petroleum fields run dry during the next 30 years, if the British economy shows no signs of turning around and the welfare rolls keep expanding...

...The effects of the City's attitude are far-reaching, self-perpetuating, and contagious...

...Partly because of sagging morale and partly because the present government seems unwilling to recognize the problem, Margaret Thatcher and her party are way down in the polls...

...The fact is that British morale, the old bulldog spirit, is drooping badly and Thatcher must take a substantial share of the blame...

...Particularly remarkable to outsiders is the recurring, lamentable failure of "the City," London's venerable financial community and a natural part of the Prime Minister's constituency, to give British industry the resources it needs and deserves...

...Glaring examples are to be seen almost everywhere...

...Were this an isolated case, the prudence of the money men would be understandable, whether or not the bug machine proves to be a world-beater...