The Invisible Impact

Sean Connery's new casino on the Isle of Man was nearly deserted for lack of tourists, who normally come over by boat from Britain at this time of year.

Chicken farmers on the Orkney and Shetland islands off Scotland's northern coast were stuck with 2,000,000 eggs and no way to get them to market. On the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey, potato farmers worried about how they would ship this year's crop to Britain.

The inhabitants of Britain's fringe last week were indeed feeling the pinch of Britain's three-week-old shipping strike.

But in London, Leeds or Liverpool, the average person was hardly aware that anything was wrong. Food prices stabilized after an initial upward flurry as supplies from the Continent continued to arrive in foreign ships. Unable to export for lack of ships, British automakers simply upped their production of right-hand-drive models for the home market, and British buyers snapped up nearly all they could produce.

The invisible impact would, however, catch up with the nation soon enough. It had already shown up in one category. The Treasury reported last week that the loss in Britain's monetary reserves for May was $106 million, the highest one-month loss since sterling's serious weakness last July. Things are likely to get worse. The strike may already have cost Britain as much as $420 million in export sales.

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