Wilson's First Hundred Hours

With practiced aplomb, Harold Wilson last week took charge of Britain as if he had been swept into power by a landslide. Shortly before 8:30 last Monday night, a black Rover drew up in front of No. 10 Downing Street; the crowd that had gathered outside gave an approving cheer. Pausing on the doorstep, the new Prime Minister impatiently waved aside the applause. "We have a job to do," he said in his flat Yorkshire accent. "We can only do it as one people, and I am going right in to start that job now."

Thus did Wilson, with his wife Mary at his side, return after an absence of nearly four years to 10 Downing Street, the official home of British Prime Ministers.* The country's electoral drama, the most suspenseful in memory, had begun four days before when British voters failed to give either Wilson's Labor Party or Prime Minister Edward Heath's incumbent Tories a majority in Parliament. In a last-ditch effort to stay in power, Heath tried to lure the resurgent Liberal Party (see following story) into a coalition government. But that proposal was essentially an exercise in wishful thinking on Heath's part. It quickly became clear that the Liberals had no intention of trading in their first real surge of popularity in half a century for the tag-end of a coalition with the Tories. After a caucus of Liberal M.P.s, Thorpe dispatched a polite thanks-but-no-thanks letter to the Prime Minister.

A short while later, Heath, looking tired and drawn, drove to Buckingham Palace and tendered his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II. Six minutes later, at 7:18 p.m., Harold Wilson arrived and, according to the palace bulletin, "accepted Her Majesty's offer" to form a new government. By the time the Wilsons arrived at Downing Street, Heath had packed his bachelor bags and gone to spend the night in a borrowed flat.

In some respects, Wilson's homecoming was reminiscent of 1964 when, the youngest British Prime Minister of the century at 48, he had assumed office with a bare majority of four seats in the Commons. This time he found himself leading Britain's first minority government in 45 years--a certain challenge to his celebrated agility at political tightrope walking. He also inherited Britain's worst economic crisis since World War II, including a state of emergency that had darkened the country for four months, a three-day work week and a month-old coal strike that severely impaired industrial production and a $9.1 billion balance of payments deficit, the largest in British history.

Marathon Session. There was no glib talk this time of Labor's first hundred days, but Wilson set out to make his first hundred hours count. The first item on the agenda was to get the coal miners back to work-- and back to work they went. Even before he was sworn in, Wilson's new Employment Secretary, Michael Foot, summoned officials of the National Union of Mineworkers and the government's National Pay Board. In a marathon twelve-hour bargaining session, they managed to hammer out an agreement that had eluded Heath's government for five months.

While the $230 million wage package is more than twice the original government offer, the Tories can hardly complain. On the same day that he called the election, Heath ordered the Pay Board to study the miners' case and promised to abide by its recommendations. Last week the board proposed wage hikes of up to 30%--almost what the miners had demanded and within $2.3 million of the final settlement. The increases will raise miners' wages in the lowest category from $58.17 a week to $73.60 and in the highest bracket from $84.61 to $103.50.

That done, Wilson moved to name his 21-member Cabinet. On the whole, his choices proved to be a judicious balancing of the various factions in the Labor Party, with the key posts going to more conservative Laborites. The principal appointments:

FOREIGN SECRETARY: James Callaghan, 61, an avuncular pragmatist who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary in earlier Wilson administrations. A firm Atlanticist and NATO supporter, Callaghan is skeptical about the Common Market but not hostile to it. In Middle East affairs, he will be less ardently Arabist than were Heath and Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Denis Healey, 57, a wartime commando major and former Defense Secretary from 1964 to 1970. He now concedes that he is "a gamekeeper turned poacher." He is likely to wield a light ax where defense is concerned but supports orthodox financial policies.

HOME SECRETARY: Roy Jenkins, 54, a committed European who led the rebel Labor faction that favored Common Market membership, an issue over which he resigned from the party's shadow cabinet at one point. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1967 to 1970, he was credited with putting Britain back on its economic feet. He is regarded as one of Labor's most thoughtful and articulate spokesmen.

EMPLOYMENT SECRETARY: Michael Foot, 61, a skillful backbencher from the left wing of the party and regarded by many as a brilliant choice to keep the labor unions in line. One of the finest orators in the House of Commons, he is a prolific journalist and has written a well-regarded biography of the late Aneurin Bevan (TIME, Jan. 28).

In other key posts Anthony Wedgwood Benn, 48, resumed his old responsibilities as Minister for Industry; Shirley Williams, 43, was given a new portfolio of Prices and Consumer Protection; and Roy Mason, 49, becomes Defense Secretary. As his personal economic adviser, Wilson chose millionaire Socialist Harold Lever, 60, who is known and respected in international financial circles.

In the uncertain days of his first administration (1964-66) Wilson liked to quip: "A week is a long time in politics." Last week he indicated that seven days would not be at all long enough. "This government is not a transient and passing phenomenon," he told the House of Commons in his first visit back as Prime Minister. "We are planning for a year or more ahead. " Bob Mellish, Labor's chief whip, was bolder, declaring: "I shall behave as if we were a government with an enormous majority."

Bravado, betokening an early fall? Not really, unless Labor by accident or miscalculation proposes legislation that would compel the Conservatives, Liberals and fringe-party M.P.s to unite in a majority against the government. All parties are well aware, though, that the voters are in no mood for another election and might lash out at the party that prompted one. Heath himself, before taking up his seat on the opposition bench, called on Britons "to set aside partisan differences." Privately, he attributed his defeat in part to the fact that the electorate was fed up with slanging-match politics.

Wilson is not about to barge in and try to ram Labor's more controversial planks through Parliament. As he warned his M.P.s at a caucus last week, "There will have to be priorities." His most pressing problem will be to make arrangements for billions of dollars worth of foreign credit to keep Britain solvent over the next few years. Fulfilling his promise "to get the country back to work" --and seeking to restore business confidence--he ordered an end to the three-day week, which had cost Britain $4.6 billion in lost production and unemployment payments. He also announced a nationwide freeze on residential rents. Labor's legislative priorities include old-age-pension increases, land-speculation curbs and repeal of the Tories' Industrial Relations Act, a law modeled on the Taft-Hartley Act that has antagonized both labor and management. All should prove relatively uncontroversial if not uniformly popular measures.

The new government's ambitious goals on nationalization are more doubtful. Said a senior Wilson aide: "My guess would be that [the Cabinet] will make haste slowly." The likelihood is that only building land for residential and industrial development and port facilities and trucking will become state owned. On North Sea oil, the Wilson government is expected to seek a 51%-49% partnership with the oil companies in licensing agreements but will stop short of outright nationalization.

Wilson's strong suit has been his shrewd tactical sense--that of a cunning strategist who knew how to pick his way through, as he once put it, "political traps and minefields." Always a much more complex man than his natural ebullience and everpresent pipe suggest, he provides few glimpses of his inner self and has no close political cronies. At 58, his tastes, like his upbringing as the son of a Yorkshire industrial chemist, are unpretentious: detective stories, raspberries, a nip of brandy. Each summer, he spends three weeks in his cottage on the desolate Scilly Isles (where a local Tory was obliged to fish him out of the sea last summer when his dinghy overturned).

As he got down to work at 10 Downing Street last week, Wilson could reflect with some pleasure on the fact that he was the first Prime Minister since Winston Churchill to return to Britain's highest elective office for a third time. Whether he can rescue Britain from its present sea of troubles represents Wilson's greatest political challenge.

*In a slight departure from tradition, Wilson later announced that he would use No. 10 only as an office and would maintain his residence at his home on Lord North Street, a short walk away.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.