Britain's Fading New Jerusalem

...Factories in England lost more days through strikes each year of World War II than in 1938, the year before the fighting began...

...A series of scandals has rocked "the City of London," this country's internationally respected financial center...

...Prince Andrew, fourth in line to the throne, and his fiancee Sarah Ferguson make a handsome couple...

...Barely had the guns fallen silent in Europe than they swept their wartime paladin, Winston Churchill, from office to make way for leaders who would build homes and hospitals, provide care for the vulnerable and for everybody else who needed a helping hand...

...Labor shortages notwithstanding, since virtually every available able-bodied man was in uniform, British unions engaged in the restrictive practices for which they subsequently became world-famous: They blocked the introduction of new technology that would have helped the War effort, and resisted the rationalization of production procedures because it would have reduced the size of the work force...

...See "Dog Days in Britain," NL, September 9, 1985...

...Small wonder the most patriotic Norman Gelb, The New Leader's regular London correspondent, is the author most recently of Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain...

...Scotland Yard, already troubled by an increasing inability to solve more than a small fraction of the crimes committed in thecap-ital, has had several of its own members accused of misconduct...

...Alas, a book has just appeared that substantially undermines these nostalgic reminiscences...

...How different it was in 1941 when the mood was one of grim determination," a columnist in London's Evening Standard muses wistfully...

...British engineering genius deserves greater recognition, too...

...As for its postwar position, Barnett contends it is no accident that Britain, mother of the Industrial Revolution, today finds itself ranking 14th among non-Communist nations in per capita GNP— with little more than a third of West Germany's manufacturing output per head and half that of the United States, and with only "North Sea oil standing between [it] and economic catastrophe...

...But too many of the City's practitioners have been caught engaging in shady practices—including improper use of insider information, misappropriation of other people's money and tax fraud...

...There was much talk of "pulling together to beat the Hun," but class-based management was poorly trained and unimaginative...

...It was from the study of the British working class,' Barnett notes, "that Marx and Engels principally derived their conception of the alienated proletariat...

...is seldom heard from Londoners these days...

...The country," hesayssadly, "isn't the same now...

...In William Blake's glorious hymn, the promise is made to "build Jerusalem in England's green and precious land...

...Prime Minister Thatcher's government seems to have run out of ideas...

...Strict guidelines are therefore being introduced, putting financial activities under close scrutiny...

...RUNNING OUT OF FUEL Britain's Fading New Jerusalem BY NORMAN GELB London Not even the prospect of a Royal wedding this summer has been able to lift the British out of the doldrums they have been mired in for quitesome time...

...It was to erect that New Jerusalem, Barnett recalls, that the foundations of the British welfare state were laid as the War came to an end...

...And despite heavy bombing of German industrial areas as the War progressed, production of Rolls-Royce aircraft engines reached only 70 per cent of the productivity levels achieved by Daimler-Benz...

...Barnett draws a different, more unsettling conclusion from his research: "The British people brought [their predicament] on themselves...

...The matter might not have been given much credence, except that three London policemen have been arrested and formally arraigned for severely beating totally innocent youths just for the hell of it while on duty...

...Britons can be heard despairing that practically nothing is going right...

...Many apologists for Britain's present industrial shortcomings ascribe Germany's superior economic performance to the saturation bombing that resulted in the building of a new, modern industrial plant...

...Its generating plants, thecommittee found, are endangering the people living near them, and perhaps the entire country, to an extent no other nation would tolerate...

...In addition, some suspected criminals have complained of policemen assaulting them during interrogation...

...It took three times as many man-hours to build the magnificent British Spitfire fighter plane, for example, than were required to churn out its main German rival, the Messerschmidt 109G...

...In The Audit of War, Correlli Barnett, a distinguished British historian and Keeper of the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, reports on his careful examination of long-buried wartime files...

...Despite mounting setbacks and disappointments that might be expected to bring a faltering government toitsknees,the maj ority of public opinion polls show Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's ruling Conservative Party again running neck-and-neck with the other two political parties here in terms of popular esteem...

...Traditionally, it has been a place where a man's word is considered his bond...

...In part, at least, this may be attributable to a tendency to find solace in Britain's managing against all odds to overcome a powerful World War II adversary...

...Even after unions were persuaded to permit the use of welding instead of riveting in armaments factories, management was required (and agreed for the sake of industrial peace) to keep a riveter standing around at full pay—while British soldiers were dying in North Africa or slogging their way up through Italy...

...It would be sad indeed if Britain were to end up having nothing more to offer the world than Royal pomp and cricket bats...

...Barnett' s j udgment on Britain' s War performance is, I think, rather harsh...

...As people have been digesting that disagreeable development, another British institution, revered the world over for high standards and efficiency, has begun to lose its luster...

...Remarkably, though, the feeling of deep frustration has not sustained itself politically...

...Questions are first beginning to be asked about what will happen once the North Sea oil runs out, roughly two decades from now...

...What was not foreseen was that a point would be reached where money would no longer be available to adequately finance the building of homes, the maintenance of hospitals and the National Health Service, and the other trappings of the New Jerusalem...

...An organization of British lawyers has charged that very frequently officers fabricate their court testimony to help convict individuals they have arrested...

...and the third force, the Social Democratic-Liberal Alliance, shows no signs of true originality...

...To a foreigner accustomed to corruption at home, the general level of British police behavior remains admirable...

...Their nuptials at Westminster Abbey will undoubtedly be conducted with unerring elegance, proving once more to hundreds of millions of enchanted television viewers around the world that there are still some things Britain does better than anyone...

...All of this, moreover, has come on top of a parliamentary committee report lambasting Britain's nuclear power industry, slated to play a key role in revitalizing the national economy...

...The records show, he says, that the "British disease" of low productivity and industrial unrest plagued the country in the darkest days, when Hitler's forces were a mere 20 miles away across the English Channel...

...Nevertheless, the proud old refrain, "Aren't our police wonderful...

...Nevertheless, Barnett's analysis of Britain's fundamental difficulties is profound and disturbing, especially in the light of what appears to lie ahead...

...Neither the incompetence of management nor the refractoriness of the unions can obscure the indomitable spirit the country displayed when it stood alone against the Third Reich—not to mention the countless acts of individual heroism...

...the Labor Opposition remains committed to building the New Jerusalem, with nary a serious thought devoted to creating the wealth to finance it...

...A man who was a 21-year-old fighter pilot avers, "You can't imagine the spirit of the times then...

...Whatever the motives and expectations, according to Barnett, this destroyed Britain's long-term economic prospects by diverting to social welfare programs the funds that should have gone into industrial reconstruction...

...Anticipation of the event has been tempered, however, by recent revelations confirming that the areas of British superiority are shrinking at a depressing rate...

...At the same time the British worker, less skilled than his German counterpart, had been stripped of national spirit by centuries of shabby treatment at the hands of his employers and social superiors...

...before the bunting was hung across the streets" to celebrate the 1945 victory...

...The people had experienced enough deprivations and self-denials...

...He was on call from dawn to last light for weeks as the Royal Air Force waged a life or death struggle to prevent the Luftwaffe's gaining mastery over England's skies during the Battle of Britain...