"An Honorable Government"

Living up to his campaign slogan, LET'S GO WITH LABOR, Britain's new Prime Minister went, went, went. In a few whirlwind days last week, Harold Wilson issued a series of edicts and exhortations that clearly proclaimed both the pragmatic aims and no-nonsense style of his administration.

Wilson's first big decision in office was as bold as it was desperate. In an urgent attempt to close Britain's critical trade deficit, he abruptly decreed an extraordinary 15% tax on imports, doubling Britain's tariffs overnight (see WORLD BUSINESS). Though Whitehall insisted that the tax was only a stop-gap measure, Britain's trading partners throughout the world protested that it was a backward-looking move that might jeopardize years of patient progress toward lower tariffs. Wilson's rebuttal was contained in his next major policy pronouncement, a detailed White Paper emphasizing that the solution to Britain's economic ills does not lie in "oldfashioned, restrictionist ideas," as he puts it, but in stem-to-stern reform of backward industries and restrictive labor practices.

The Prime Minister expanded on his theme in a TV fireside talk from 10 Downing Street. In a Yorkshire-accented echo of John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Wilson urged: "We have got to think less about what we can get out of the economy and a great deal more about what we can put into it. We need to think more about earning money and less about making it."

By way of putting more into the economy, Wilson sent Board of Trade President Douglas Jay to Moscow and Peking to drum up new trade. Aviation Minister Roy Jenkins hurried to Paris for a critical reassessment of the $1 billion Anglo-French project to beat the U.S. into the air with a supersonic airliner, the Concorde. Then, when the new government had been in office barely a week, it was pushed by Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith into its first diplomatic crisis (see Rhodesia).

Off to Washington flew Britain's new Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, to explore Britain's prized "special relationship" with the U.S. From two breezy days of conversation, it was plain that on most major issues Britain still sees eye to eye with the U.S. (see THE NATION). There are obvious areas of disagreement as well; the most imminent is Labor's longtime advocacy of a U.N. seat for Peking. While the Tories also favored Red China's admission, said Gordon Walker, "they didn't push hard. The Labor government is an honorable government; we will push hard for what we stand for."

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