Remarkable Recovery

HALLO, HAROLD! bannered the cover of London's Economist, and British papers, depending upon their bent, either hailed or deplored the sudden re-emergence of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who only a year ago had seemed well on the way to political oblivion. Following the Labor Party's 1966 landslide victory, which gave it a 97-seat majority in Commons, the Laborites suffered an almost unrelieved series of setbacks. Plagued by problems at home and abroad, they lost one by-election after another to the Conservatives, and Labor's rating in the public opinion polls plummeted so low that one sampling last year showed the Laborites trailing the Tories by a 26.8% margin.

No more. In recent weeks Wilson and his party have achieved a remarkable recovery that has touched off speculation about new elections. Two of Britain's major public opinion polls now show the Laborites as having edged slightly ahead of the Tories; the other two show Labor behind but fast overtaking the Conservatives, who only one month ago still had a 5 1/2% to 7 1/2% lead.

Labor's upsurge has been caused by a combination of many factors, including Britain's economic recovery, the establishment of relative peace among the strike-prone unions, and an impressive array of social legislation, most notably the easing of Britain's archaic divorce and abortion laws. Wilson himself has also been a major factor. Even during the months of crisis, Wilson remained the unruffled, slightly bemused Oxford don calmly puffing his pipe and stoically waiting for better times. The most recent Harris poll shows that 52% of the people sampled would favor Wilson as Prime Minister again, while only 34% would prefer to have him replaced by Conservative Party Leader Edward Heath, whose own popularity remained conspicuously low even when his party was scoring high ratings.

At present, Wilson, who must hold new elections before next April, is pondering whether to seize upon the sudden shift in his party's fortunes by calling elections for June or July or to wait a few more months. The advantage of a later date, possibly in October, is that the pro-Labor trend is likely to be more pronounced by then, thus making Wilson virtually certain of becoming the first British Prime Minister in this century to lead his party to three successive election victories.

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