‘Beatle Spirit’ Call By Wilson

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31120, 25 July 1966, Page 13

‘Beatle Spirit ’ Call By Wilson

CN.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright;

LONDON, July 24.

The Prime Minister, Mr Harold Wilson, yesterday called for the “Beatle spirit” in industry to help Britain solve its economic ills.

The Labour Partyleader delivered his pep talk to the nation —after last Wednesday’s austerity budget—in the cellar club in Liverpool where the Beatles launched their lucrative career.

“It is not a boom we need,” he told teen-agers and civic officials at the club’s re-open-ing ceremony. “It is determination and the heart to work. We have to show the world we can take off our coats and get on with the job.” The Prime Minister added: “Britain only got to the top of the pop league because our beat groups asserted themselves.”

“Lost Week-end”

The Conservative Party leader, Mr Edward Heath, opening a week-end Opposition assault on the Labour Government efforts to rescue Britain from financial crisis, charged today that Mr Wilson spent “a lost week-end” in Moscow “while Britain’s lifeblood drained away.” Mr Heath told voters in his constituency of Bexley, near London, that Wilson’s measures announced on Wednesday to save the pound sterling from threatened devaluation were “hasty, clumsy, ill-pre-pared, a tatty rag-bag of old ideas, a botched-up package of half-baked measures.” On Mr Wilson's return, Mr Heath charged, the Prime Minister “took panic measures” which shattered the “myth” of Labour’s social

programme for the nation. Mr Heath spoke as trade union chiefs debated whether to support Mr Wilson’s wage freeze policy or submit to union members’ pressure for higher wages. The leader of the Liberal Party, Mr Jo Grimond, said that it was now blindingly clear that the Government had no new economic measures different from those of a Tory Government. “There is no power house in Downing Street. “There has been no reform

of the Executive, the Civil Service or Parliament,” he told a meeting at the National Liberal Club.

“Twice as many committees and commissions have been set up than ever before.” Last Wednesday night might well have been christened “St. Selwyn’s Day” with the old cliches such as “backs to the wall,” “Britain is always at her best under attack,” and “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay,” only just falling short of the actual mention of Dunkirk.”