Oh Dear, What Can The Matter Be?

A choir of touring American college students, concluding that London could do with some cheering up, gathered in the portico of St. Martin -in-the-Fields church one afternoon last week, and offered an impromptu rendition of Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be? For Londoners who paused to listen in the rain, it seemed like a good question. As the nation suffered through its second three-day work week, decreed by the government because of a coal miners' slowdown, Britons swapped opinions about darkened streets, frigid flats, gutted paychecks--and ways to endure the energy shortage.

The office staff at Raleigh Industries, the bicycle manufacturers, worked without heat or light so that all available power could be switched to the production line. A snuff-making firm in Sheffield regeared its production from electric power to a water wheel first used in 1737. There was panic buying of some items, notably bread and toilet paper, and camp suppliers did a booming business in butane lamps and stoves. A Battersea candlestick maker turned out a million candles a day instead of his usual 250,000. His most popular item: a wax effigy of Prime Minister Edward Heath.

But the remarkable equanimity that has characterized much of British reaction to the crisis erupted in a boil when locomotive engineers staged a one-day strike that snarled commuter traffic from one end of the London metropolitan area to the other. "We're only working three days a week because of the power cuts, and it takes me nearly that long to get up and back from Chertsey," said one irate commuter. "By the time I get home, the telly's gone off." (All TV stations have been ordered to sign off at 10:30 p.m.) The trainmen, who have refused to work overtime and Sundays for the past five weeks, walked out after the government threatened disciplinary pay cuts for men engaged in 'the job action. The trainmen have said they will stage another one-day strike this week if the National Railways Board does not resume negotiations. To help cope with the crisis, Prime Minister Heath last week created a new Department of Energy with sweeping powers over offshore oil, coal, gas, electricity and nuclear energy. He named his closest adviser, Lord Carrington, the outgoing Secretary of Defense, to head it up.

Basically, Britain's present state is not so much an energy crisis as a breakdown in industrial relations. The 270,000 coal miners have refused to work overtime until they get a settlement giving them basic increases of $18 to $22 on weekly wages ranging from $57 to $83; the Heath government has offered an increase of $5 to $6 a week. Anything more, said Heath, would exceed the 11% limit of his Phase III counter-inflation plan, plus cause other unions to demand similar boosts.

Breaking Point. The powerful Trades Union Congress last week offered to make assurances that if a "special case" settlement were worked out with the miners, other unions would not use it to hike their own demands. Reversing a previous rejection, Heath met with the union leaders for two hours. "Our proposal was received with interest," reported the T.U.C.'s Sir Sidney Greene. But aides said that Heath was doubtful the unions could be kept in line, making such an agreement unlikely.

Actually, Heath's position stiffened last week. The Prime Minister declared that the government would tough it out on a three-day week until spring if necessary. But business leaders pointed out that the British economy would reach the breaking point before then. "After the next two weeks," said Reginald Dixon of the Confederation of British Industry, "there will be a general severe deterioration."

The shortened week has already taken its toll. Three million people are estimated to have been laid off. The British Steel Corp., whose cutbacks will send the most ripples through other industries, has laid off nearly half its 235,000-man work force. The company claims that for every week that the three-day week lasts it will take a full month to regain full operational production.

Sir Raymond Brookes, chairman of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds Ltd. engineering group, is one of a growing number of industrial leaders who feel that the time has come for Heath to settle with the miners: "I've been down three coal mines in my life, and each time I've said, 'If I had to work there, I'd want paying to go to work and paying again when I'd done it.' " If opposition within Heath's own party continues to grow, he may find himself fighting not just the miners but for his political life.

As if he did not have enough troubles at home, Heath was also smarting from critical news stories appearing in foreign countries, particularly the U.S. "We aren't in a state of continual crisis," he declared in an interview with the New York Times. "I know anybody reading the American press will think this was the case because this is all that has been reported for the past few weeks. They have shown no interest in Britain for months and years, ever since the war. Now all they do is describe Britain as being in a state of decay and one of perpetual crisis, which does not bear any relationship to the facts. For the past year, until this particular dispute with the miners, we have had a period of very great industrial peace and we have been extremely successful in dealing with wage-cost inflation." What the Prime Minister neglected to mention was that in the three years prior to 1973 he was forced to declare a state of emergency four times--unprecedented in British history--and all of them were the result of industrial disputes.

Meanwhile, Uganda's irrepressible General Idi Amin Dada, whose graveyard humor has frequently been directed at President Nixon, launched a "Bananas for Britain" campaign to help the British through their winter of discontent. Amin personally donated $1,400 and squeezed another $3,400 out of a bemused Kampala rally. Whitehall officials, who obviously had not yet lost their talent for repartee, said the Foreign Ministry had received no money yet. But, they added, they would know just what to do with it if it arrived: turn it over to Ugandan Asians in Britain as compensation for the losses they suffered when they were summarily evicted from their country by Big Daddy.

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