Let the Flowers Wilt

Umbrella companies are folding, Hyde Park looks like a sandlot, and at the London zoo, bath water for the elephants is being reused to water plants. Hundreds of grass and scrub fires are erupting in the parched countryside as Britain, which has had exactly one-tenth of an inch of rain this month, suffers through the worst drought since meteorological records were started in 1727. Last week Prime Minister James Callaghan summoned vacationing Cabinet members back to No. 10 Downing Street for an emergency meeting and asked Sports Minister Denis Howell to assume responsibility for conserving what remains of the country's dwindling water supplies. Howell immediately asked his countrymen, who now use an average of 39 gal. of water a day, to halve their consumption. He also urged Britons to spy on their neighbors and report any "abuses or misuses" of water. "The flowers are going to have to wilt," said Howell, "and cars will have to remain dirty."

Brush Fires. The problem goes well beyond wilted flowers. In South Wales, where the drought is especially severe, firemen and soldiers were battling forest and heath fires around the clock last week. In Haverfordwest, a geriatrics hospital had to be evacuated when a brush fire spread to the hospital's roof. More than 100 miles to the east in Surrey, a mother and her four children were nearly burned to death when flames from a roadside grass fire engulfed their car. "Wales is a tinderbox," says Roy Orringe, deputy fire chief for Monmouthshire County. "My boys are stretched to the limit. Our calls have increased tenfold, and some work 72 hours without a break."

Under a "drought bill" that grants regional authorities the power to ban nonessential uses of water, Welshmen have been forbidden to water lawns, wash cars or fill swimming pools. Anyone caught hosing his garden is subject to an $800 fine. Beginning last week, more than a million Welsh residents are getting water only between 7 a.m. and 2 p.m., and this week some factories will go on compulsory half-rations. "There are no baths, and clothes don't get washed so often," says Cardiff Housewife Elizabeth Davies. "I used to use the washing machine every day. Now it is once a week, and we pipe the dirty water from the machine into garbage bins and keep it for flushing lavatories."

Forced Layoffs. The drought, which afflicts much of Europe, also threatens to undermine the government's year-old program to rebuild Britain's battered economy. Summer grain and food crops are suffering, and food prices are certain to rise. Worse, the drought could force large segments of British industry into layoffs or shortened work weeks. British Leyland, for instance, fears the loss of as many as 1,000 jobs at a parts plant outside the Welsh capital of Cardiff. With unemployment at a postwar record of 1.5 million (6.4%), any further increase could jeopardize the government's wage-control agreements with organized labor. Len Murray, Britain's top union leader, warned last week that unless the jobless rate was quickly cut, there would be "a rapid growth of support for radical changes in the government's policies," a threat that could come true next month when Britain's powerful Trades Union Congress holds its annual meeting in Brighton.

One good rainfall will not be enough to rescue Britain. In fact, even if it rained constantly for the rest of the summer, the country would still have to maintain conservation measures. Although some regions (Scotland, North Wales, sections of Yorkshire) are suffering no drought at all, other regions, including the Thames area and southwest England, are so parched that meteorologists say a full 18 months of above-average rainfall are needed to restore water-supply levels to normal.

The only pleasant thing to surface from Britain's drought: in a Welsh valley that had been turned into a reservoir years ago, the stone cottage where Percy Bysshe Shelley romped with his young bride Harriet Westbrook and wrote his first great poetry was exposed to view again as the waters dropped.

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