A Tiny Victory for Harold Wilson

"There is no one in British history more experienced in small majorities than myself." So said Harold Wilson last week as he watched the results of Britain's second general election in less than eight months. Despite polls that showed the Labor Party winning by a margin of possible landslide proportions, Wilson came out of the election with a wafer-thin parliamentary majority--319 seats in the House of Commons, or two more than half of the total--and the smallest popular vote (39.3%) for any majority government in Britain's history.

The underwhehrdng Labor victory was nonetheless sufficient to give Britain the stable government that it has lacked since last February, when no party won a clear victory and Wilson formed a minority government that could have been brought down at any tune by a combined vote of the Conservatives and the smaller parties. This time the Tory representation in the House dropped from 296 seats to 276.

The Liberals, whose striking gains in February (19.3% of the popular vote and 14 seats, with one later addition) had threatened the traditional two-party political system, not only failed to make an electoral breakthrough into major-party status but lost two of their seats at Westminster.

The feisty Scottish Nationalists, meanwhile, picked up four more seats, for a total of eleven, and raised their share of the popular vote in Scotland to more than 30% (against 22% in February). The Scots have long been angry at the loss of their talented young to London and the concentration of the country's wealth in the south. Westminster will thus be under continuing pressure to give greater autonomy 'to the region. Other regional parties also fared well. The Ulster loyalists retained ten of Northern Ireland's twelve seats, including one taken by renegade Tory Enoch Powell, while the Plaid Cymru gained one seat in Wales, for a total of three.

In light of the qualified mandate, Wilson's Laborites were understandably restrained in their celebrations. "It is going to be a very, very hard slog for a couple of years," the returned Prune Minister said, referring to an economy that is buffeted by ever gloomier news of combined inflation and recession almost every day. "It is going to be a hell of a job."

Hellish Job. Much of the election pivoted on just how hellish that job will be. Tory Leader Edward Heath, who is now expected to step aside in favor of Party Chairman William Whitelaw, said it would be hellish indeed. During the final week of the campaign, he described the fall of the British economy in elegiac, black-bordered tones. "We shall be cutting our own throats if we think that collapse cannot happen here. It can." Heath argued that only a government of national union could deal with the country's problems and promised that if the Tories won he would call in other parties and groups to help form it. To deal with the staggering economy, he pledged strict control of public spending, a more moderate growth of the money supply and possible wageprice controls if inflation continued at its present 17% annual rate.

Slimmer, more amiable and more relaxed than he used to be, Wilson countered by admitting that things were serious, but not all that bad. Heath, he charged, was selling Britain short. "Britain faces a grave economic crisis, but it is not heading for catastrophe." Wilson compared himself and his government to a soothing family doctor beside the sickbed and sarcastically derided Heath's call for a national coalition as a desperate ploy by a man who knew that he could not get in any other way.

"We know exactly what a Conservative government would be like," said Wilson, "whether they succeed in various invitations to Mr. Rag, Mr. Tag and the Marquess of Bobtail or not."

Jeremy Thorpe's Liberals were watched by both sides with nervous apprehension. Several major papers changed longstanding policies and urged a coalition of one or the other of the major parties with the Liberals. The Liberals never managed to make much headway, however, let alone "change the face of British politics," as Thorpe had promised. "The country is going down the drain, and they are squabbling about the size of the plughole," the Liberal leader complained, but he failed to offer an alternative that many voters considered a sure drain stopper.

Wet Evening. Heath may well turn out to have been right about the unhappy state of the British economy--quite a few experts, at least, agree with him --but it was clearly more than most voters wanted to hear. Beyond that, much of the electorate believed that Heath had brought on last winter's confrontation with the coal miners and feared that another dark winter might be the prospect if he were returned to 10 Downing Street. Another factor was Heath's personality, or lack of it. "Even his best oratory is about as exciting as a wet evening in Wigan," wrote Editor William Davis in Punch last week. Most days during the campaign Heath looked like someone who had had trouble getting out of bed that morning.

Labor's narrow victory may, paradoxically, be better for both Wilson and the party than the big majority his supporters hoped for. At its last party conference, Labor had proposed to set up a National Enterprise Board that might take over key industries and to hold a country-wide vote on whether Britain should stay in the Common Market. Wilson and the majority of his Cabinet members are by nature more moderate than most of their followers in the Trades Union Congress. With his modest mandate, the Prime Minister now probably will be able to put off the more radical measures. Most likely he will settle for nationalization of ports, the troubled aircraft and shipbuilding industries and land for home building. His commitment to hold a vote on the Common Market will be more difficult to back away from, but Wilson may be able to finesse that as well.

Four Times. Last week's election may well turn out to be the last face-off between Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Four times since 1966, British voters have had a choice between those two talented but limited men. Not only is it virtually certain that Heath will retire, but it is widely assumed that Wilson, having achieved his goal of becoming Britain's winningest Prime Minister of the century, may also step down in a year or so. Until then, he will be trying hard to make his mark on history. "I would have liked a bigger majority," he said last week, "but this Parliament is interesting and viable and can continue until the Labor government has done everything it was elected to do."

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