Let George Do It

The bouncy little man in Moscow's Red Square last week acted much as many tourists do, gawking at the Kremlin's towers through his thick, hornrimmed glasses, praising Russian hospitality and greeting every Ivan he could find with a breezy "I'm from London. How are you?" The visitor was British Foreign Secretary George Brown, 52, making his first trip to the Soviet Union to discuss with Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko a peace plan for Viet Nam and the problems of nuclear proliferation. Brown did not get far with the Russians, but he predictably described the talks as "frank" and "most useful." Those are adjectives that apply equally to Brown himself. Lately Harold Wilson has been leaning increasingly on the unusual talents of Britain's most ebullient and controversial politician.

An Irish truck driver's son who bubbled up through the Labor Party's ranks to the No. 2 spot like the suds on a pint of warm stout, Brown has been defying the staid frock-coat-and-homburg image of a diplomat ever since he arrived at Whitehall four months ago for his first day of work. While senior foreign officers ceremoniously gathered out front to greet the new man, Brown slipped in the back door and went to work. In what the Daily Mail has called "the hundred hair-raising days" since, Brown has gone about his job in his own quixotic way, using frankness as a rapier and leaving behind him a trail of trampled toes. On his first trip abroad as Foreign Secretary in October, Brown informed a Detroit audience of top businessmen: "I have always liked to believe that there are some things we British do better than you--and judging by the lunch we've just eaten, feeding is one of them."

Ruthless & Demanding. In British political circles, Brown generally inspires either admiration or loathing--but little in between. In his rise in the Labor Party, he has exhibited a quick and imaginative mind, an instinctive gift for finding new approaches to problems and a flair for efficient administration. After years of representing the powerful trade unions in Parliament, Brown was made the party's deputy leader in 1960 by the late Hugh Gaitskell. When Gaitskell died, Brown was the logical choice for the leadership, but quickly ran into competition from Harold Wilson. Wilson finally beat out Brown in what Laborites quipped was less a contest of favorites than a tally of which man had made the fewest enemies.

Slightly to the left of Brown, Wilson, who needed Brown's support to keep the party together, kept him on as his deputy leader. It was Brown, not Wilson, who carried the brunt of Labor's daily campaigning in the 1964 and 1966 elections, making ten to a dozen speeches a day in town after town. When Labor won in 1964, Brown was given the Department of Economic Affairs, quickly proved the most effective reorganizer the department had seen in years. He was brutal, ruthless and demanding--but he did what had to be done. He developed Labor's roundly applauded "National Plan" for growth, only to see it shelved by the sterling crisis. He nearly quit over Wilson's stiff price and income controls, yet his labor-management spadework was largely responsible for making them stick.

"Shut Up!" His reward was the foreign secretaryship, which he had long coveted. Brown exchanged portfolios with Michael Stewart, who in his nearly two years as Foreign Secretary proved a tough and able diplomat, notably in supporting the U.S. position in Viet Nam against internal Labor Party criticism. Brown has not been on the job long enough to produce any big successes, but he is steadily gaining influence in the Wilson Cabinet. Long the most enthusiastic Laborite supporter of Britain's joining Europe, Brown persuaded an initially reluctant Wilson that it was time to knock on the Common Market door again (TIME, Nov. 18). While Wilson is grappling with domestic problems, he has turned over to Brown the responsibility for making progress on a nonproliferation treaty, the restructuring of NATO, an East-West detente, and a way to hold a British line--however thin--east of Suez.

Like most diplomats. Brown has more than enough opportunities to bend an elbow--and he can prove irrepressible when doing so. His friends insist, however, that tales of his tippling are exaggerated by the British press, and that his unorthodox ways and occasional rudeness of manner are small prices to pay for the integrity and insight with which he tackles his job. Brown is awed by few people, not even by the royal family. When he encountered Princess Margaret at a recent party greeting other ladies with regal little kisses, he asked if he could have one too. Replied Meg, torn between irritation and amusement: "Shut up!" Just about everyone in Britain knows that George Brown, whatever his virtues or faults, is totally incapable of doing that.

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