Toward Recovery?

Spring breezes last week tore the clouds over Britain to shreds. The sun broke through, warming the crocuses in Regent's Park, lighting up the pink almond blossoms in the suburbs, and providing British journalists with a neat symbol. For Britons could bask in a good deal of good news. Austerity was thawing.

To a cheering House of Commons, President of the Board of Trade Harold Wilson announced, after more than seven threadbare years, that clothes rationing was ended forthwith. Mr. Wilson publicly tore up his own little red ration book. Demonstrating its ability to get vernally cute, the Board of Trade had called the derationing of clothes "Operation Godiva." Stores braced themselves for a furious stampede of British Godivas clamoring to buy new clothes. But it never came; instead, there was a rush on towels, sheets, handkerchiefs and underwear. High prices kept customers from splurging on clothes, rationed or not. Sagittarius jingled in the New Statesman and Nation:

Be clothing ne'er so coupon-free This Spartan isle will shortly be, Methinks, a nudist colony.

Thinner Meat. Britons were freed of some other Spartan restrictions. Wilson eased gasoline rations to allow 810 miles of "pleasure-motoring" during the summer (the former quota was 540 miles). As soon as circumstances permitted, Wilson promised a "bonfire of controls."

But the week also brought a blow for Britons. Argentina, which supplies nearly a third of Britain's meat, had cut deliveries. This meant that Britain's meat ration, already thinner than a slice of boardinghouse beefsteak, would be cut by another 20%.

Behind these ups & downs in Britain's daily existence were some hard facts of British economic life. They were summarized last week by Sir Stafford Cripps in his "Economy Survey for 1949." The news he had about Britain's great effort toward recovery was as good as anyone had a right to expect; some of it was better.

Said Sir Stafford's report: "1948 was a year of great and steady progress." Britain is now paying with exports for 90% of her imports. She had reduced her overall trade deficit from -L-630 million in 1947 to -L-120 million. At year's end, she actually had a small surplus on hand, though, the report warned, it was not certain that the surplus had "come to stay." Within these overall trade figures, however, was Britain's trade with the dollar countries and her chronic dollar shortage. This problem '--Britain's most urgent--had also been eased. In 1947, the British had bought in dollar countries nearly $3 billion more than they had sold. That deficit had been halved in 1948, and the Cripps report called for more exports to close the gap.

The output of British industries was up 12% over 1947, although the number of workers had increased only 2%. This meant that the individual British worker worked harder and more efficiently. The most striking success was achieved by Britain's steel industry, still free-enterprising, which produced nearly 15 million ingot tons, substantially bettering the target set by government planners the year before. This was more steel than Britain had ever produced in any one year.

Tougher Competition. The report warned, however, that the upward trend could not continue at the 1948 clip. One of the chief reasons: British goods, whose high prices reflect the high cost of Labor's social welfare program, are meeting tougher competition in the world markets. One 1948 example was textiles. This industry produced less than it was supposed to; yet Britain was unable to export all the textiles on hand. This was part of the reason why clothes rationing was lifted last week. Thus what most Britons considered a sign of increasing prosperity might be a symptom of incipient economic illness.

Sir Stafford Cripps put it mildly when he spoke of a "really fine effort by the British people." Perhaps no other people in the world, placed in a position such as Britain's, could have worked so hard and at the same time denied themselves so many of the fruits of their own labors. But, added Sir Stafford, for all the progress in 1948, "this economic advance pointed to no early and complete solution of the country's problems."

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