BRITAIN: Heath Takes His Case to the Voters

Britain this week was a country beset by a crisis on top of a crisis. The nation's 270,000 coal miners walked off the job at the start of the week, and Prime Minister Edward Heath launched a three-week election campaign to fight for his political life. For Britons, the prospect for the lingering weeks of winter was for more sacrifices, as the nation headed toward a divisive election and potentially disastrous coal shortages. While no one was predicting that they would not find the resilience to weather this latest avalanche of troubles, there was no question that the country was plunging into the most fatefully uncertain period in its postwar history.

Stark Choice. The first word that Heath had decided to cut short his five-year term, which expires in June 1975, and seek a vote of confidence was received last week by Queen Elizabeth on the royal yacht Britannia, lying at anchor in Auckland's Waitemata Harbor. The Prime Minister requested Her Majesty to dissolve Parliament and grant permission for a general election to be held Feb. 28. The Queen quickly cabled her ritual assent and returned to her royal tour of New Zealand.

That night, in a television address, Heath pictured the issues confronting Britain as a stark choice between economic survival and the inflationary wage demands of union militants. "The election," he declared, "gives you, the people, the chance to say to the miners and to everyone else who wields similar power, 'Times are hard, we are all in the same boat, and if you sink us now, we will all drown.' "

Much of British industry had already been cut back to a three-day week to conserve fuel before Britain's coal miners began their nationwide strike, which could eventually bring the country to a shattering halt. Coal stocks at power stations (70% of Britain's electricity is generated by coal) are not expected to reach emergency levels for about two months. But the effects on British industry will be swift, and potentially ruinous. Said British Steel Chairman Monty Finniston: "For four to seven weeks you will get a trickle of steel, and then-curtains." The London stock market last week reflected that gloomy prospect when prices plunged to their lowest level in seven years because of what one official called fears of "a catastrophe unparalleled in our postwar industrial history."

Unemployment, said the National Economic Development's Ronald MIntosh, "would be astronomical." The number of workers already unemployed or only partly employed is 2.3 million. The country is now staggering under its greatest trade deficit in history ($5.1 billion). Yet, as steel and other vital products dry up under the impact of the strike, Britain will have to go shopping abroad for even more imports.