Ready for Emergency

New British Fords backed up on the Thames docks, steel symbols of the tens of millions in pounds sterling being lost each week that exports were halted. The price of sirloin in London's working-class neighborhoods was up from 98-c- to $1.05 per Ib. -- a sign of the slow but steady pinch on imports. And Harold Wilson's Labor government, moving deliberately but diplomatically, took two steps to cope with -- but hardly end -- the merchant seamen's strike that, in its second week, was slowly strangling Britain's vital commerce with the outside world.

First, at Wilson's behest, Queen Elizabeth signed a proclamation declaring a national state of emergency, under laws invoked only five times in the past 50 years.* The proclamation enables the government to impose price controls and to clear congested ports--presumably by using Royal Navy tugs and crews--and allow foreign ships, which are unaffected by the striking National Union of Seamen, to dock and unload essential food, raw materials and medical supplies. Well aware that the use of the Royal Navy could provoke sympathy strikes by dockers and truckers handling imported goods, Wilson's government later in the week announced that an independent four-man court of inquiry, headed by Appeals Court Justice Lord Pearson, would investigate the seamen's pay and working conditions and file a report that would serve as a basis for new negotiations. Since the Pearson inquiry is expected to take anywhere from twelve to 14 days, the strike itself could go on for a month.

*In the 1921 miners' strike, the general strike of 1926, the dock strikes of 1948 and 1949, and the railway strike of 1955.

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