BRITAIN: Heath Takes His Case to the Voters

• Share

(2 of 3)

The election campaign is likely to be one of the bitterest in postwar Britain. The Tories have made no secret of the fact that they are planning a scare campaign on a "Reds under the bed" ticket, blaming assorted Marxists, militants, Trotskyites and "unpatriotic" union leaders for the country's troubles. Their campaign slogan is "Who Gov erns Britain?"-a hard-lining appeal to the voters to choose between Heath's tough stance and the striking workers. Heath, 57, will also exploit past successes like his handling of Northern Ireland, which resulted in a marked reduction of tensions there, and his early decision to go all out in the potentially highly profitable development of North Sea oil.

Poll Reversal. But Labor, led by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, 57, has ample ammunition to fire back. The Tory slogan is "a fraud," Wilson railed last week. "The short answer is that for some months now no one has governed Britain." Labor's battle cry will be a "fair society," accompanied by a promise to repeal the hated Industrial Relations Act, which sharply restricts union activities, introduce across-the-board food subsidies and set up a new prices-and-income board under the direct control of Parliament. The party's strongest pitch will be on inflation. Food prices have gone up 18% in the past year, mortgage rates to a record 11%.

When election talk first surfaced last month, Heath deferred his decision for another go-round at a settlement with the miners-and with good reason. British voters are about evenly divided between the country's two major parties, and there was no certainty that Heath's Tories could pull off a victory. The latest Gallup poll last week in fact gave Labor 42%% of the vote to the Tories 39%%. That was a reversal of January's poll, when the Tories led Labor by 40% to 38%. Said the Opinion Research Center's Chairman T.F. Thompson: "Public opinion has never been more volatile than it is at the moment."

Much of that voter uncertainty stems from Heath's inability to solve the three-month-old miners' dispute. From the first, the government's handling of the negotiations with the miners was inept-and last week was no different. After the miners voted overwhelmingly (81%) to strike, -Heath met with the Trades Union Congress, which represents 10 million workers, including the miners, to attempt to resolve the crisis. He promised that if the miners settled, he would appoint a royal commission to hear their grievances. In all likelihood, he added, the commission would recommend an increase, but he could give no assurances that it would be retroactive to the March 1 expiration of the miners' contract.