Tactical Blunder By Wilson

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30562, 3 October 1964, Page 13

Tactical Blunder By Wilson

IBy

ALAN MITCHELL,

. N.Z.P.A.

Special Correspondent] LONDON, Oct. 2. Mr Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, has enlivened the General Election campaign by his implication that strikes during this phase are a “Tory plot.” Commenting on a strike at a propeller-shaft works in Birmingham which threatens to make 200,000 car workers idle, he said: “This sort of thing happening election after election is a matter which cannot be left where it is. “So I want to state quite clearly that the Labour Government will intend to hold a full inquiry, a searching in-

quiry with full power, to get at the facts in any such trade dispute which occurs in this General Election. “I am not going to prejudice the results of this inquiry, but I think there is sufficient justification to hold such an inquiry. And such an inquiry will be held in this case and in every case which develops before polling day.” Mr Wilson’s sally has produced the biggest hoots of derision heard during the campaign so far, and there has been quite a bit of hooting. It is reported that influential trade union leaders are “hopping mad”—but silent. Far from helping Labour in its campaign there are suggestions that Mr Wilson has made a bigger blunder than any Mr George Brown, the Deputy Leader, is likely

t to produce—or that Mr Quini tin Hogg might throw into ; the ring to harm the Conservative cause. It has been noted that the ■ Birmingham strike has been i hatching since March and I came to a head during last i month. It is also recalled i that during the 1959 strike : in the works when a similar ; suggestion was made, the late Mr Morgan Phillips, then ■ Secretary of the Labour ' Party, said: “The last thing i in the world I would do is i to suggest that this is a Tory plot.” It has been accepted all along that the unpopularity of the trade unions with the general public, the likelihoodof strikes during the campaign and union “trouble” in areas like the London docks, could have an adverse affect on Labour’s election chances. This being so, it may have

been that Mr Wilson considered the best form of defence to be attack. But the furore his remarks have caused have so far served to concentrate attention on a very weak Labour point.

There is feeling that Mr Wilson was on firmer ground when. he attacked Sir Alec Douglas-Home on Britain’s balance-of-payments position. He sunk in a few body blows when he accused the Prime Minister of “fatuous deceotion” and “twisted talk” with “every distortion and every misrepresentation he or his speech-writers could invent” and jeered.at him for “crawling to the Americans.” The trade and payment figures, said Mr Wilson, “are far, far worse than the figures for 196(161 which forced Selwyn Lloyd to bring the economy to a stand-still and introduce the pay pause.”