Wilson Barks Back

"Watch it," warned an angry Harold Wilson in a closed-door meeting last week. "Every dog is allowed one bite. But a different view is taken of a dog that goes on biting all the time. Its license might not be renewed."

The British Prime Minister was not speaking to Ho Chi Minh, Charles de Gaulle or Ted Heath but to members of his own party. They were 60 or so dissident, left-wing Labor M.P.s who for months have been snapping at Wilson's policies. The rebels have outspokenly opposed his stands on Viet Nam (too hard), Rhodesia (too soft), the wage freeze (too tough on the working class), defense (too expensive), and possible entry into the Common Market (too great a surrender of sovereignty). If the rebels do not swing back in line, warned Wilson, he might just call new elections and bar them from running.

Contradictions. That seems highly unlikely, but Wilson made the extreme threat because he needed a solid base of support if he hoped to push through his current European policies, which are somewhat contradictory. One contradiction is evident in Wilson's talk about the state of the British pound. Is it strong or weak? Wilson seemed to want it both ways.

In tripartite British-German-U.S. talks in London on the question of Anglo-American forces in West Germany, Wilson's representative argued that Britain's pound and balance-of-payments position were so strained that the government would have to slash its 55,000-man British Army of the Rhine by two-thirds unless the West Germans helped to offset its foreign-exchange costs of $250 million a year. But also last week Wilson jetted to The Hague on his fifth mission to Common Market countries and reiterated a now familiar theme. His argument: the pound has become so stable that Britain could enter the market without much of a wrench--or without much danger that market members might have to bail Britain out of future financial crises.

Compromise. Europeans are perplexed because Wilson is talking about reducing Britain's military commitment to the Continent at the same time that he wants to increase the British economic commitment to Europe. In a compromise proposal to keep the Rhine army intact at no damage to Britain's monetary reserves, the U.S. last week suggested that the British go on paying for it, but that Germans promise to invest an equivalent amount in British securities.

As for the Common Market, the French now seem to regard Britain's entry as inevitable--but not likely to take place until 1971 or later. The price of admission is certain to be designed to reduce Britain's international influence. For example, the French are expected to insist that Britain gradually withdraw the pound from its position as a world-reserve currency. Wilson is not likely to balk at such suggestions because leading Britain into the Common Market would offset his failures on other fronts.

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