The Edentulous and the Myopic

Prime Minister Harold Wilson has had to guide his ship of state through some tumultuous storms, but, compared with recent weeks, those voyages must seem to have been made on a millpond. Wilson's Labor Party was routed last week for the third straight year in local elections. Newspaper polls showed that if a general election were called now, the number of Laborites in Parliament would fall by two-thirds. Finally, after quelling a "mini-mutiny" by Labor backbenchers, Wilson was nearly nibbled to death by dentures.

Wilson's woes are largely self-made. His surprising clumsiness in foreign affairs, ranging from the preposterous invasion of tiny Anguilla in the Caribbean to his own ineffectual journey to Nigeria, where he tried vainly to serve as statesman-broker between rebel Biafra and the Nigerian federal government, has made Britain a figure of world ridicule. At home, Wilson is locked in a particularly bitter battle with British unions, which are incensed by his union-reform bills--and especially at the bill's penal provisions against wildcat strikers.

Conservative Ploy. Labor's backbenchers, a traditionally insecure lot, are plainly worried that the issue of union reform may cost them their jobs. Without the prop of union treasuries and union electoral support, Labor candidates would virtually lose by default. In this dire situation, some backbenchers began wondering aloud in the corridors whether Labor might employ a favorite Conservative Party tactic--that of changing Prime Ministers whenever party popularity plummets. This ploy enables the party to shift the blame for past errors onto the shoulders of the outgoing leader.

The coup attempt barely got started, largely because the two most prominent candidates to replace Wilson--Home Secretary James Callaghan and Chancellor of the Exchequer Roy Jenkins --refused to support the plotters. Moreover, three other Cabinet Ministers, led by Secretary for Social Services Richard Grossman, took a strongly pro-Wilson stand. The Prime Minister felt so confident that he was able to brag to a May Day rally: "I know what is going on. I am going on. Your government is going on!" Wilson thereupon confided that he intended "taking this country by the scruff of the neck" and forcing it to do what was needed to be done, regardless of the consequences to the Labor Party.

Saying so hardly made the going great. Jenkins reported out a gloomy budget for 1969-70. Then Crossman casually announced that the government was raising by 25% the price of dentures and spectacles obtained through the National Health Service. Everything about the announcement by Crossman was wrong. It was released right on the eve of local elections in which. Labor's chances were poor to begin with, and it seemed almost calculated to rile the very backbenchers who had organized the abortive revolt. Worst of all, it reminded everyone in both parties that back in 1951 a similar charge for dentures and spectacles was enough to provoke Wilson's resignation from the Attlee Labor Cabinet. Anyway, M.P.s wondered, why had Crossman not eased the impact of his announcement by burying it in Jenkins' budget report?

Round Robin. The reaction was immediate and nearly hysterical. Backbenchers collected 125 signatures calling for an immediate withdrawal of Cross-man's rates. Asked one Laborite: "Why should the edentulous and the myopic be expected to correct our balance of payments?" Further, a round-robin letter, sponsored by right-wing Laborites, demanded a secret ballot by Labor M.P.s to determine whether Wilson should remain as Prime Minister and party leader. In a move without precedent, Parliamentary Labor Party Chairman Douglas Houghton warned Wilson that he could push his union reform through Parliament only at the risk of blowing apart the party. At week's end, as Wilson surveyed the extent of election losses that left Labor controlling only 57 of the 542 boroughs in Britain, he could perhaps take consolation from the fact that in medical history there has been no known case of a fatal bite by dentures.

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