Great Britain: Left-Right for the Team

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For weeks Prime Minister Harold Wilson had been preoccupied with foreign affairs—daily consultations on Rhodesia, his trip to Washington to see Lyndon Johnson, his speech to the U.N. Home again last week, he took time out for some domestic housekeeping.

Out of the Cabinet went Thomas Fraser, who as Transport Minister infuriated Britain's freewheeling motorists by proposing a 70-m.p.h. speed limit and spot-check drunkometer tests. And out of the demanding home-secretaryship went Sir Frank Soskice, 63 and ailing, who intends to retire from politics by the next general election.

Man to Be Watched. Wilson's replacements added a youthful and vigorous left-right punch to his team. As Transport Minister, he appointed the redhaired, vivacious firebrand of the party's left wing, Barbara Castle, 54, who has been in Wilson's Ministry of Overseas Development. The most important shift involved the new Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins. At 45, he is the youngest member of Wilson's Cabinet —and a man to be watched.

Though he is the son of a Welsh miner who became an M.P., the elegant Jenkins by taste and temperament is far more at home in London's salons than the New Towns' public saloons. As early as Oxford, Jenkins found himself at odds with the woolly Marxism of the university's Labor Club, helped found the more moderate Democratic Socialist Club. While still in his 20s he wrote a biography of his friend and political mentor Clement Attlee, has since penned three historical works, including a bestseller on Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. His latest: Victorian Scandal (see BOOKS), about the ruination of Liberal Sir Charles Dilke. "I regard writing as the only real work," Jenkins once said, and he does it well enough for the Economist to have once considered him for its editorship.

Élan & Efficiency. In Labor politics, Jenkins has always been on the right: pro-Europe, pro-NATO, ill at ease with the party's radical, Utopian socialists. He was long in Labor Leader Hugh Gaitskells inner circle. When Wilson became Prime Minister last year, he offered Jenkins what many insiders considered a noose to hang a potential rival: the Ministry of Aviation, which was faced with the politically delicate task of arranging sharp cutbacks in Britain's aircraft production. Jenkins did the job with elan and efficiency, earning the promotion to Home Secretary. This post, too, will test his mettle: crime, immigration, racial discrimination—all explosive problems in Britain —are his new bailiwick. Jenkins is not yet a serious rival for Wilson's succession. But with his youth, he may become the very model of a leader for the 1970s: pro-Europe, moderate in social philosophy, possessed of a feel for the past as well as an openness toward the future in an era of rapid change for both the Labor Party and Britain.