Instant Heroines

Fed up with hearing everyone complain about Britain's ailing economy, five pert and miniskirted typists at a factory in Surrey decided to do something about it. To help boost productivity and hold costs down, the girls--Valerie White, 21, Joan Southwell, 20, Christine French, 17, Carol Ann Fry, 16, and Brenda Mumford, 15--volunteered to work 30 minutes extra a day without any additional pay. In most countries such a gesture would have attracted scant attention. In Britain, whose economic difficulties stem as much as anything from an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude among its workers, the girls became heroines overnight.

Prince Philip sent a telegram: "It was the best news I've heard." Prime Minister Harold Wilson added congratulations, and all three British political parties endorsed the girls' move. Britain's new poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis (see following story) wrote a tribute. BBC-TV featured the girls on its major news program, and two London ad agencies bought full pages in the Times of London to hail their spirit. London's Financial Times praised the plan as a way to remedy Britain's economic weakness. A printing firm in Lincolnshire began turning out 100,000 "I'm Backing Britain" badges. More astonishing, the 740 other employees at the girls' company, which produces ventilation equipment, agreed to put in a half-hour of unpaid overtime each day. In return, the company immediately cut prices on its products by 5% and sharply reduced dividends to its shareholders. Employees at several other small manufacturing firms also volunteered to put in unpaid overtime.

Britain's trade-union bosses saw nothing but mischief in the Back Britain movement. "A pure gimmick," said Jim Conway, 53, general secretary of the 1,300,000-member Amalgamated Engineering Union to which most of the employees at the girls' company belong. "The problem in British industry," he added, "is outdated, outmoded factories, and outmoded and ill-equipped management." Nonetheless, the workers at the girls' firm defied a union order to stop the free work and even threatened to bolt the union.

Whether the Boost Britain drive would make any serious inroads into the country's work habits was doubtful. The British laborer's lackadaisical attitude toward work is deeply ingrained. Though New Year's Day is not a holiday in Britain, fully one-half of the workers in many areas stayed home. And, in a country-by-country poll of attitudes toward world problems, the British put the establishment of a 30-hour week as a goal second only to finding a cure for cancer.

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