A Word from the Challenger

Britain's Harold Wilson was in puckish good humor. Wearing a pair of sunglasses to hide a sty on one eye, he refused to appear at the door of No. 10 Downing for tourists' photographs. Said he with laconic whimsy: "I might upstage poor Ted Heath again."

Indeed, everything seemed calculated last week to upstage the Tories' new leader in his debut as party chief. As the Conservatives gathered at Brighton for their annual conference, the headlines were dominated by the Rhodesian crisis. And when Wilson flew up to Balmoral to see the Queen, the blood froze in Tory veins: with a mere two-vote majority and the opinion polls rapidly swinging his way, Wilson might well be asking permission to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Not so, or at least not yet. But the reaction in Brighton all too clearly revealed the Tories' defensive state of mind.

No Surprises. Heath's task was made no easier by the genuine outpouring of warmth that greeted his predecessor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home. And the freshly minted Conservative statement of aims was something less than the dynamic manifesto the Tory faithful had hoped for. Its conventional mix of incentives for private enterprise and tolerance for the Welfare State brought no surprises.

In his introductory speech, Heath droned on about the benefits of "occupational pensions" and "meals-on-wheels" to the yawns of the audience. It was not until next day that the Conservatives were able to grab some headline space. Up stepped tough, mustachioed Enoch Powell, the shadow Defense Minister, with an astonishing plea for reduction of British military commitments east of Suez. Arguing that "a military presence has more than once proved an obstacle," Powell said that in the long run the quelling of Communist expansionism in Asia and Africa was not Britain's business. Besides, maintenance of military bases and forces from Aden to Hong Kong was too heavy a drain on British resources.

Strange sentiments to come from a right-wing spokesman for the party of Empire? Perhaps, but Powell's thinking reflected a growing sense of realism on the Tories' part, as well as another step in Heath's determined plan to bring Britain closer to Europe and win membership in the Common Market. Closing down such major British bases as Aden and Singapore, substituting a cheaper defense line based on small, stepping-stone islands in the Indian Ocean would produce a considerable saving in Britain's annual $6 billion defense budget. The U.S. Navy is currently studying the possibility of erecting a joint base in the Seychelles Islands to that end. The Labor Party, still officially committed to maintaining British bases east of Suez, is also pondering the question while preparing a defense White Paper due next spring. With both parties agreed in principle on the need for some reworking of the "thin red line," the new thinking may well produce repercussions throughout the Commonwealth, Europe and the entire Atlantic community.

* With mayoress of Brighton after conference session.

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