BRITAIN: The Miracle Worker

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If Ulster was the first trial by fire for the Tory government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, Britain 's economic crisis has now clearly become the second. A perennial cold-weather cycle of labor un rest, coupled with a diminished flow of oil from the Middle East, threatens Brit ons with their most difficult winter in years. It also threatens to destroy Heath 's anti-inflationary plans for ushering Brit ain into a new era of smooth expansion.

Last week Heath named William Whitelaw, Britain 's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since 1972, his new Secretary of Employment. It was a popular and promising choice. Whitelaw had been directly responsible for taking Ulster from the edge of civil war to an entirely new form of government in which Catholics as well as Protestants truly share power. A few days after the appointment, representatives from Britain, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland sat down for their first, historic talks on a Council of Ireland. But the robust figure who made it possible was absent: Wil liam Whitelaw had a new war on his hands.

"Gentlemen, good morning. Can we agree on what day it is?" Thus, with a huge grin, did "Willie" Whitelaw often begin his morning conferences with Ulster's disputatious politicians. Marveled John Hume, Minister of Commerce in Ulster's new coalition, last week: "You went in angry to see him, and you always came out wondering why you never got the boot in." Added Deputy Chief Executive Gerry Fitt, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party: "He had an effective English slice of Irish charm."

Understanding the Irish to the satisfaction of the Irish was no mean feat for a relatively unknown English politician who had spent virtually his entire career in the back corridors of parliamentary life. A former Scots Guards officer, Whitelaw was raised on his grandfather's estate in Scotland, sent to Winchester and Cambridge, where he "got his blue" in golf. At 55, he has a reserve of charm as large as his hulking, 220-lb. frame and a rumpled warmth about him. His suits never hang quite right, and his booming voice sometimes takes on a pained edge, as if its owner were mortally wounded. The overall effect is immensely winning. Admits one member of Labor's Shadow Cabinet: "He has the only unrehearsed face in the entire Tory government."

Whitelaw once summed up his personal and political style by admitting: "I rather like to be liked." When he first arrived in Ulster, he threw open the doors of his office in Stormont Castle to politicians and community delegations. "I know you expect me to fail," he candidly told a small group of skeptical journalists. "All I can say is that I will do my best not to." Once, when a delegation from the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Defense Association appeared, ominously clad in dark glasses and combat uniforms, Whitelaw casually offered them afternoon tea. He scandalized Protestants by flying members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army to a secret meeting at a borrowed house in London's fashionable Chelsea district. Observes the Alliance Party's Bob Cooper: "Whitelaw had the ability to search through an argument with a microscope, find a tiny germ of agreement and enlarge on it."