Maggie Gets A for Action

BRITAIN Maggie Gets A for Action With zest and drive, the new Prime Minister sweeps into office

With zest, an unaccustomed light touch and the drive of a workaholic, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher swept grandly into office last week. The widely accepted grading of her initial high-speed performance: A for action.

No sooner was she installed at No. 10 Downing Street--after a couple of good nights' sleep to recover from the nonstop campaign and the tumult of the election --than Thatcher was on the move on several fronts at once. Before the week was out, she seemed to have gone far toward countering some of the misgivings about her inexperience, and allaying some of the fears about a national lurch to the right, at least too far to the right.

Summoning her balanced, surprisingly moderate 22-member Cabinet for its inaugural meeting, she delivered what her listeners regarded as a lively pep talk. With impressive confidence, her colleagues reported, she stressed the need of a measured return to more limited government and self-reliance.

She also announced two significant additions to her team; both, interestingly enough, have been successful retailers. David Wolfson, 43, a former director of the Great Universal Stores chain who had been secretary to the shadow cabinet, was installed as her personal chief of staff. Sir Derek Rayner, 53, joint managing director of Marks & Spencer, one of Thatcher's own favorite shopping haunts, was named chief waste cutter, as it were. His assignment is to cut fat and improve efficiency in the overgrown bureaucracy of Whitehall.

Belying her reputation as a combative iron lady, the new Prime Minister was relaxed and gracious at her maiden appearance before the House of Commons. Taking her seat on the government front bench under the speaker's rostrum, she gently chided a Tory colleague for his reference to the "new boys" in the House. She drew more laughter with an anecdote about re-elected Speaker George Thomas; his noted propensity for hedging parliamentary questions, she said, was an inspiration to them all. After a subsequent Cabinet meeting and a series of asides with separate ministers, Thatcher worked long hours in her study on the Queen's Speech. To be delivered at the official opening of the new Parliament early this week by Elizabeth II, in ermine robe and crown, the speech from the Throne is supposed to lay down the whole tone and framework of the new government's policies.

To meet another fast-approaching deadline, Thatcher huddled with her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, and his Treasury team over the new budget that is expected in mid-June. That will not only chart the government's plans for concrete economic policy, but will test the worth of Thatcher's hardest-hitting campaign promise: tax cuts. At the same time, she also tackled a range of other problem areas:

> Law-and-order received high priority with a government decree granting $100 million in pay raises to the police, as promised by the Tories during the campaign. Another pledge, to raise armed forces' salaries to civilian levels, was fulfilled the next day.

> The trade unions, a potential source of trouble for any Tory government, especially this one, were given immediate attention, with a velvet glove. Last week 370,000 teachers continued their disruptive slowdown, postal workers threatened a possible walkout, and power workers were voting by mail on whether or not to accept a 9% pay offer already approved by their union bosses; a rejection could mean an early showdown with the government. Despite Thatcher's tough stand on the abuses of union power, her moderate Employment Secretary, James Prior, quickly convened back-to-back meetings with leaders of both labor and industry. In both cases, he stressed his own "softly, softly" approach. But in both cases, he was also warned that the next few months will be "hard going" on the labor front.

> In foreign affairs, the Thatcher emphasis was on continuity rather than drastic change. The Prime Minister received two visiting heads of government without missing a beat. Ireland's Prime Minister Jack Lynch, in London on private business, came in for a half-hour tete-`a-tete to sample her views on the chronic issue of British policy in Ulster. Although Helmut Schmidt had offered to postpone a meeting that had been scheduled for last week with her predecessor James Callaghan, Thatcher insisted upon wining and dining the West German Chancellor.

She bluntly warned her guest that Britain would not be "a soft touch" for the European Community. Schmidt, who got along famously with "my good friend Jim," was asked at a press conference how he expected to do with Thatcher. "I have no doubt," he answered cheerfully, "that we shall get on rather fine."

Thatcher also started to prepare herself for an upcoming itinerary of international summits that would daunt an experienced statesman, not to mention a seldom-traveled novice. They include a round table of European leaders in Strasbourg following the European Parliament election on June 10; the Big Five economic summit with the U.S., West Germany, France and Japan in Tokyo a week later; and a potentially tension-laden Commonwealth Conference in Zambia in August, at which the Queen will preside.

While the spotlight logically was focused on the activist new Prime Minister, her defeated rival was consoled by his own moment of glory last week. With a ringing ovation for his enduring personal popularity, an assembly of Labor M.P.s re-elected Callaghan by acclamation as leader of the party.

Now 67, Callaghan is expected to step down some time within the year and retire to his Sussex farm. At that point, analysts believe, he will try to ensure the succession for his fellow moderate, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, 61, over the other probable contender, Tony Benn, 53, chieftain of the party's militant left wing. But Callaghan also squelched any unseemly haste among aspiring successors by insisting that "there is no vacancy."

At week's end, Maggie Thatcher was still so busy that she had not found time to move her family from their Chelsea house to their new private quarters on the top floor of No. 10. In fact, there wasn't time to bake a cake for Husband Denis on his 64th birthday.

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