The Severest Controls In Peacetime History

"We are the party of change," said Harold Wilson at last week's 65th annual Labor Party conference in the Channel resort of Brighton. "We seek not to conserve but to transform society." The 1,200 delegates had no idea that before the day was finished the Prime Minister would begin a historic transformation of the British economy.

Only hours after his speech, Wilson sent four ministers flying to Balmoral Castle in Scotland with an Order in Council for the Queen to approve. With that, a Labor Government that had been brought to power chiefly by working-class votes ended the most cherished right of the British worker: collective bargaining. The order changed Britain's present, voluntary wage-price freeze to a mandatory system with prison sentences and fines for anyone who dared pay higher wages, or mark up prices, without official consent. Wilson's aides made clear that even after the manda tory freeze expires next year, some kind of government control of wages and prices would most likely continue as a permanent part of British policy.

Severest Control. To Harold Wilson there seemed no alternative. During Labor's two years in office, wages of British workers rose 21 times faster than productivity. It was the continuation of a decade-old trend that has priced many British goods out of the world market, brought inflation at home, and imperiled the value of the pound sterling (TIME ESSAY, Sept. 2).

Wilson had hoped to keep the standstill voluntary; but in recent weeks, company after company had been on the verge of giving their workers raises and cost-of-living increases. Furthermore, the unions were threatening to ignore the freeze and press for higher wages. These pressures led Wilson reluctantly to impose on Britain the severest economic control ever exercised during peacetime in a Western nation.

"Let Us All Beware!" Conservative Party Leader Ted Heath called Wilson's decision "a grave moment in our country's history." He warned that the law would require an army of inspectors "to circulate in every shop and factory to see that no man is paid a penny more than the government decrees." Cried Heath: "Let us all beware!" Wilson's law would, he said, "lead to the smothering of initiative and to the flight of the enterprising from this country to other, freer lands." Dissatisfaction with Wilson was reflected last week in the Gallup poll, which gave the Tories a 2 1/2% lead over Labor. It was the worst showing for Labor since it took office in 1964.

For his support of the U.S. position in Viet Nam, Wilson was booed by Britniks as he read the New Testament lesson in a Brighton church, but the most bitter criticism came from trade unionists within his party. They argued that the whole labor movement would die if unions no longer had the right to bargain for higher wages. Six hundred auto workers massed outside Wilson's hotel in Brighton. "Wilson, you traitor!" they shouted. Inside the Labor conference, Frank Cousins, the boss of Britain's biggest union, the Transport and General Workers, fumed defiance. "We shall now be in conflict with the law," he declared. "Because when the law is unfair, trade unionists since time immemorial have opposed it."

Blind Loyalty. Despite such protests, Wilson managed to win party endorsement of his stiff decree. "I suppose it's all right," said one bewildered Scottish Laborite, as he cast his district's ballots for Wilson. "After all, they are our government, and we've got to keep them in or we'll have the Tories."

On issues where there was less fear of bringing down the government, Wilson received jarring setbacks. By a wide margin, the party voted to withdraw British forces from east of Suez by 1970 and trim annual defense expenditures to $4.9 billion (v. $6 billion at present). The party also endorsed Frank Cousins' one-sided resolution to "bring all pressures" on the Johnson Administration to stop the fighting in Viet Nam.

Party resolutions are not binding on British governments, and Wilson is not likely to endanger relations with the U.S. by reducing Britain's defense commitments. Still, for a politician who seeks to rule by consensus, the Brighton balloting clearly showed that he had failed to achieve one in vital foreign policy and defense fields. It is now up to Wilson to either create a new consensus within his party or bend to the one that already exists.

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