The Fateful Weeks

To celebrate his sixth full year in office--the longest term for a Tory since 1902*--Prime Minister Harold Macmillan went before the cameras for a television interview last week. It was a masterful performance. Relaxed and confident, Macmillan talked with easy confidence of the promise and problems of Britain today.

Off-camera, things were not going so well as Harold Macmillan made it seem. Britain's hopes of membership in the Common Market hung precariously in the balance. After the decisions at Nassau, a question mark rose over the future of its military power. The latest Gallup poll showed Labor leading the Tories 45% to 36%. Many of Macmillan's own Conservative party backbenchers were critical of the government for its inability to stop the growing unemployment in Britain's north.

Reason for Confidence. Seeking a solution to the problem of jobs, Macmillan last week gave Lord Hailsham a new ministerial task of studying the northeast depressed areas, and told Birmingham businessmen that "with a little bit of luck" the economic slump might be reversed this year. As another weapon against political decline, Macmillan is clearly counting on admission to the Common Market despite the overwhelming obstacles ahead. On TV he said: "I believe that as soon as the Common Market is settled, and as soon as it is clear that there will not be another Socialist government, you will find the businessmen reinvesting on a bigger scale than ever before. That is why I am confident about 1963."

A decision on Common Market entry may be imminent. This week Britain's Chief Negotiator Edward Heath returns to Brussels for a crucial round of negotiations with Europe's Six--the "crunch" talks in which Britain will have to agree to dismantle its own elaborate agricultural-subsidy system or persuade the Europeans to ease their terms for entry.

Seeking Support. In preparation for the Brussels meeting, Ted Heath went to Chequers, Macmillan's ministerial estate, spent hours urging his views on West Germany's visiting Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder, a considerable sympathizer. Then Heath crossed to the Continent to line up additional support for Britain's position. He talked with Belgium's Deputy Foreign Minister Henri Fayat, who wants Britain in the Common Market, and with France's Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, who faithfully echoed De Gaulle's reluctance to lower the bars for Britain. Macmillan himself will continue the task on his Feb. 1 visit to Rome for meetings with Italy's Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani, due this week in Washington.

As fate would have it, the Tories won relief of sorts from the drumfire of criticism at home through a tragic happenstance in the Labor Party. Hugh Gaitskell, Labor's capable, hard-working leader, was rushed to London's Middlesex Hospital suffering from pneumonia, double pleurisy and severe pericarditis. In great pain and scarcely able to breathe, Gaitskell was allowed no visitors except his wife.

Snap Pressure. Labor spokesmen officially spread the news that Gaitskell would be back at work within five to six weeks, but medical men thought three to six months more likely. This means he will not be able to lead Labor's attack on Britain's Common Market entry. In fact, to Labor's acute embarrassment, the man who becomes spokesman in Gaitskell's place is Deputy Leader George Brown, who is as pro-Common Market as Gaitskell is anti. The conservative Sunday Telegraph paid tribute to Gaitskell by suggesting that "without him, there can be no alternative Government worth the name."

Some Tories promptly urged Macmillan to call a snap general election while Labor is virtually leaderless. But Macmillan will almost certainly resist the pressure, select his own time between now and October 1964, the date by which a general election must be held. If, during the "crunch" of the next few weeks in Brussels, Britain is admitted to the Common Market on an approximation of its own terms, and if the straitened economy revives as a consequence, the government would be in an excellent position for a general election in the fall. Macmillan, who will be 69 next month, said during his TV interview that he thought he could put in another six years on the job, and added jokingly: "The question is whether the people could stand another six." The answer may be learned during the coming fateful weeks in Brussels.

*When Lord Salisbury resigned after a seven-year term.

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