The Unchangeable George

One thing that proved a bit embarrassing for the Labor Party was an incident involving the ebullient George Brown, who is known to enjoy his drink. At a ball for party workers, some 30 photographers zeroed in on the Foreign Secretary. The persistence of the photographers so enraged Brown that he stomped off the floor, shouting that they had prevented him from dancing in peace with his wife Sophie.

Brown's fit of pique led the normally pro-Labor Daily Mirror, whose 5,000,000 circulation makes it London's largest tabloid, to take off after him. "The trouble about Mr. Brown is not that he drinks too much," said the Mirror, "but that he shouldn't drink at all. Genial George was born with so much natural ebullience that all it needs is a splash of soda to make his behavior intolerable. A double soda will, at the drop of a hat, make George the life and soul of the party, but it is not making him the life and soul of the Labor Party." The paper praised Brown for unquestioned intelligence, but said that "it is George at his worst who sends shivers down our backs, the George who makes an ass of himself at diplomatic soirees and powwows. Too much wow and not enough pow. Mr. George Brown can no longer hope to be accepted and acclaimed as an intelligent Foreign Secretary if he does not display greater reticence over the point at which Genial George, or George the Clown, takes over."

It is, of course, no secret in Britain that George Brown sometimes takes a drink--or that a drink sometimes takes him. On other occasions, he has shown what was considered undue familiarity with members of the royal family (he once even asked Princess Margaret for a kiss). At a farewell party aboard the Queen Mary last month, he frugged with a series of ladies and reportedly nibbled the ear of one. The photographers loved it, and London's tabloids splashed the pictures across their front pages. The photographers were back in force last week looking for more.

Just as the Mirror's attack was extraordinary, so was Brown's response. In a rebuttal on BBC-TV, a totally unrepentant Brown asked, in effect: What was all the fuss about? "I'm not prelending that I don't drink alcohol," he said. "I work jolly hard, many hours a day, and I don't do other things that people might frown on. If you want a Foreign Secretary who does not do anything wrong, I am not the guy you want--and I reckon the fellow you get will not be a very good Foreign Secretary. The country has to make up its mind whether it will accept me as I am, because there is not the slightest chance of my changing."

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