Back Bench for Brother Brown

One human casualty of the gold crisis in Britain was Foreign Secretary George Brown, a man with a large reputation for unpredictability. When Prime Minister Harold Wilson called the mid night conference with the Queen at Buckingham Palace at which the government decided to declare a bank holiday, he unaccountably failed to summon Brown, even though the issue's foreign policy implications were obvious. In fact, Brown, who was listening to a debate in Commons at the time, first learned of the meeting when a fellow Labor M.P. asked him what was going on. Enraged by being left out, Brown stalked off to find Wilson.

The Prime Minister tried to shrug off the omission, explaining that he had been unable to get in touch with Brown. Unmollified, Brown refused to take his place on the government front bench in Commons during the 3:30 a.m. announcement of the Labor government's economic moves. Later, in the members' lounge, Brown complained to Tories and Laborites alike: "I'm never consulted about anything." Then he gathered about 50 Labor M.P.s in the Commons' tearoom. "I'm one of you now," he said. "We are going to plunge this party back to the grass roots and see a reflowering of our party."

Next morning, Brown stayed abed and slept through the 10:30 Cabinet meeting, failed to show up at the Foreign Office at all. Instead, he sent a "Dear Harold" note to 10 Downing Street. "The events of last night and the early hours of this morning have brought to a head a really serious issue," he wrote. "It is, in short, the way in which this government is run and the manner in which we reach our decisions." Like many Britons, Brown feels that Wilson has arrogated too much power to himself, and that his one-man leadership is turning Britain's parliamentary system into a sort of U.S.-style presidential setup.

In past quarrels, Wilson always managed to talk Brown out of quitting. This time he did not try. He gave the vacant portfolio to Michael Stewart, 61, a competent but lackluster Laborite who served for 20 months as Wilson's For eign Secretary before Brown got the post in 1966.

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