Veering Toward a Vote

Britain buzzed with speculation last week over whether Prime Minister Har old Wilson would call a general election in the next few weeks. He had every reason to do so. The pound is strong, wages are up, and unemployment is at a near-record low. The fortunes of the Tory opposition are down, with polls showing Labor moving farther ahead in popularity. What better time to seek a margin in Commons more comfortable than the present three-seat majority? But to all inquirers, the stolid little Yorkshireman had one answer: "I shall make a statement in the right way at the right time, but at the moment I am not in a position to say what the right way is or the right time."

Talks in Moscow. For all Wilson's caution, the campaign had in effect already begun. A campaign manifesto for Labor was already coming off the presses. The Conservatives sent a version of their own to the printer. Both parties were setting up speaking schedules, booking accommodations and distributing new campaign material. Party whips arranged with radio and TV executives for equal time.

Wilson himself was acting more and more like the Compleat Campaigner. He sought to buttress his position on foreign affairs by jetting off to Moscow for talks with the Kremlin's duumvirate, Aleksei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev. In three days of conferences, he won a Soviet pledge to consider larger purchases in Britain and a promise that Premier Kosygin would soon pay him an official visit. Though Wilson could report no progress toward settling the Viet Nam war, the fact that he sent his disarmament minister to seek out Hanoi's top man in Moscow would help silence Labor's antiwar clique, which accuses him of not doing enough to halt the conflict.

"No Ratting." Into public view last week came one issue that Wilson wanted out of the way well in advance of a national vote. It was his long-awaited White Paper outlining a new "defense posture for the 1970s." While Wilson was in Moscow, Defense Secretary Denis Healey presented that posture to the House of Commons. Object of the plan was to reduce Britain's "overstretch" by trimming the strength of its armed forces abroad by one-third and cutting expenditures by one-sixth to $5.6 billion annually--a figure that would then represent about 6% of Britain's gross national product.*

Despite the reductions, promised Healey, there would be "no ratting on our commitments." But it clearly meant a drastic revision in the traditional composition of Britain's three services. Cruelest cut of all went to the Royal Navy, which will lose all of its four carriers, now the nucleus of Britain's sea power. The army will reduce its garrisons in Malta and Cyprus, will withdraw entirely from British Guiana and Aden. The Royal Air Force's V-bombers, which now constitute Britain's nuclear strike force, will gradually be grounded.

Instead of financing the development of expensive home-grown weapons, Britain will buy much of its gear for the 1970s from the U.S., a decision that strikes a severe blow at Britain's lowflying aircraft industry (see WORLD BUSINESS). The R.A.F.'s new bomber force will be 50 swing-wing General Dynamics F-111A's, which Britain is buying from the U.S. for $297.5 million. The navy will be outfitted with four U.S.-type Polaris submarines, and the army will be regrouped in a few strategically located bases (Singapore, Bahrein, Gibraltar) from which units can be quickly airlifted to trouble spots by a fleet of 48 U.S.-built Herky Birds.

March 31. Ironically, the most telling attack on the new policy came not from the Conservatives but from a Laborite, Christopher Mayhew, who resigned in protest as Navy Minister. The $5.6 billion budget, warned Mayhew, was "too small if we stay east of Suez and too big if we do not." Though he had quit specifically over the carrier question, he told the House that his far greater fear was that Britain simply could no longer support its worldwide defense responsibilities unless it depended so heavily on U.S. assistance that the British would become "auxiliaries rather than allies of the Americans."

Despite Mayhew's criticism, the new defense policy caused fewer political ripples than the Prime Minister had feared. Though many Empire-minded Britons were shocked by the cutbacks, their reaction was more than offset by the millions of British who feel that a vigorous hold-down on defense spending is long overdue. Thus Wilson returned to London to find his political house quite in order. The best speculation was that he would call a general election for March 31.

* As compared to 9% in the U.S., 4.76% in West Germany and 4.6% in France.

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