"Too Bloody Awful"

The Labor government had not yet dared to tell Britons what they faced. Sir Stafford Cripps, by proposing a wage freeze (TIME, Feb 16), had led Labor up to one big hurdle. But could the keen-minded jockey make the massive, stubborn trades union movement take even this first unpleasant jump? Was the beast bred or built for it?

Disagreeable Program. Last week Cripps's chances of persuasion looked better, on paper. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress agreed in principle to the wage freeze. To make it less chilling, Cripps announced that he was giving British business one month to prepare "some plan for price and profit decreases," to match the wage-pegging.

The T.U.C. General Council, however, has no direct control over its constituent unions or their nearly 8,000,000 members. It can only "recommend." A real test of Cripps's disagreeable program will come next month, when leaders of individual unions meet. Already some unions had balked. Last week the huge Confederation of Shipbuilding & Engineering Unions (3,000,000 members) was still insisting on a general wage increase. Said Communist Arthur Horner, general secretary of the Mineworkers' Union: "The first blow in the economic crisis must be struck at profits and luxury living, not at wages."

Improvident Family. Even if Cripps persuades the trades unions to accept a wage freeze, he must take Britons over still harder jumps. The bluntest warning of their probable nature came, not from any government leader, but from the London Economist. "Britain has been living like an improvident family," it wrote, "which, failing to make both ends meet, first spends the accumulated capital of the past, then borrows from friends . . . and when their loans are exhausted, begins to pawn the furniture. . . . When a family faces bankruptcy, either it goes under to a life of perpetual makeshift and pauperism, or it restores its solvency by vigorous action--by buying less, by cutting down every kind of expense and by straining every nerve to sell more of its goods and services."

What did Britain have to do to avoid pauperism? In the past two years, Britain has spent abroad $4 billion more than it had earned, expects to spend this year at least $1 billion more than it is likely to earn. British planners know that a day of terrible decision will arrive about April 1. Unless by then ERP is not only assured, but aid's arrival is guaranteed by a definite early date (midsummer or early fall), the British Government will have to slash imports. It can no longer afford to shovel in some $200 million a month of dwindling gold and dollar reserves to fill the trade gap.

In the best die-away officialese, Cripps had explained what might happen next: "If it becomes necessary to cut our dollar imports further, we shall be almost bound to have to cut raw materials. That will undoubtedly cause inconvenience." This characteristically deadpan remark was British understatement with a vengeance. One of the many things Cripps did not say--though implicit in what he said--is that one ultimate method of closing a trade gap is starving to death.

Marshall Plan aid--like loans in the past--could postpone catastrophe and buy Britain more recovery time. An economic White Paper, to be published soon, will assume such aid, because, as one Briton put it, "the alternative would be just too bloody awful."

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