Awash

Prime Minister Harold Wilson had barely got Britain's seven-week-old shipping strike settled when he found himself last week awash in a new sea of crises. The trouble began when Minister of Technology Frank Cousins huffed into 10 Downing Street one morning carrying his resignation. It was the first major defection from Wilson's leadership, and it concerned Wilson's prices-and-incomes bill, which had just been made public. Limiting wage increases to 3 1/2% annually and levying fines of -L- 500 on trade-union leaders who break the guideline, the bill naturally irks many labor chiefs--especially Cousins, who is on leave as chief of Britain's biggest union, the Transport and General Workers (1,460,000 members).

Wilson had hoped that his introduction of the long-awaited steel-nationalization bill early last week would mollify Labor's left wing not only on prices and incomes but on the Viet Nam question as well. He had miscalculated. Nearly 100 Labor M.P.s--almost one-third of Labor's parliamentary delegation--signed a petition calling on Wilson to completely dissociate the British government from U.S. policy in Viet Nam. The dissidents pressed so hard that Wilson had to move forward the date for a Commons debate on Viet Nam.

Wilson already had come out against the U.S. bombing of the Hanoi and Haiphong oil installations. With Anglo-American relations at stake, he would be pushed no farther. Summoning Labor M.P.s to a closed-door caucus the day before the Commons debate, he blistered the left-wingers, declared that some of them sought a Viet Cong victory. "What government, Western, Communist or neutral, has done more than the Labor government to seek a peace in Viet Nam?" demanded Wilson. When no one replied, he said dryly: "The silence is deafening and overwhelming."

Next day 32 Laborites abstained, but none dared vote against a government motion supporting the U.S. in Viet Nam --short of its bombing of the oil-storage areas in Hanoi and Haiphong. Wilson's cause was helped by the dramatic news that on July 16 he would be off to Moscow for talks with Soviet leaders about peace in Southeast Asia. Tactically, the announcement served to neutralize the dissidents. But Wilson has tried before and failed to persuade the Communists to talk about peace in Viet Nam. This time the pressure on him will be greater than ever. If he fails again, he will be open to charges of flying off to Moscow principally to solve his domestic differences--not a foreign war.

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