London's Bridges Building Up

The icy shock of rejection by the Common Market has had an unexpectedly bracing effect on Britain's exports, which are heading to a record $11.2 billion this year, 7% more than in 1962. Sales to the U.S. are up 9%, led by a profitable parade of Triumph sports cars (now second after Volkswagen among cars imported to the U.S.), Perkins diesel engines and aircraft parts. British businessmen have also been working the eastern side of the street, selling large amounts of steel to Red China and machinery to Russia. But the fastest rise in British exports is to the Common Market, which will buy 15% more from its rejected suitor than it did last year.

Like many of his business peers, Lord Rootes, the auto manufacturer, believes that the rejection by Europe's Six "was perhaps a good thing, because it has put Britain on her toes to look for expansion in world trading."

The Language of Money. The newly aroused British could teach even the hardselling U.S. trader a trick or two. One steel-products maker, Brockhouse Trading Facilities, found that its export manager, Reg Parkes, had been an R.A.F. pilot, bought him a small plane for calling on Continental customers. Wilkinson Sword Ltd., the blademaker, now treats the British market simply as part of Europe, and salesmen travel to Milan or Hamburg as casually as to Glasgow.

British businessmen are even shaking off many of their traditional notions about British manners, measures and money. Export prices are not so often quoted only in sterling these days, and delivery dates are no longer taken so lightly. By learning to cut men's suits to Continental tastes, the Leeds tailoring firm of Atkinson Rhodes expanded its exports to half of its total volume. Senior executives are increasingly attending language schools, and their proficiency will be rated, from "elementary" to "advanced," in exams set up by the London and Birmingham chambers of commerce. For the recent "British Week" in Zurich, promotional pamphlets were printed not just in German but in Schwyzerdiitsch, the Swiss dialect.

A Word of Caution. Booming exports are leading the way to a 41% gain this year in Britain's total output, which did not grow at all last year. Auto production, helped also by strong demand on the home front, is pulling 28% ahead of last year. Consumer credit and retail sales have been rising for three straight months. The economy is moving so well that some British leaders are crossing their fingers. Last week Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling said that wages and prices have been holding steady, thus giving British exports a competitive edge that he hoped would not be blunted in the current round of wage negotiations.

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