BRITISH ELECTION SCENE Heath renews plea to coalminers

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33460, 15 February 1974, Page 9

BRITISH ELECTION SCENE Heath renews plea to coalminers

(N Z.P.A.-P-euter—Copyright)

LONDON, February 14. The British Prime Minister (Mr Heath) has again appealed to the country’s striking coalminers to call off their stoppage immediately because, he says, they are already hurting their fellow-workers seriously. Mr Heath last night urged the Leader of die Labour Opposition (Mr Harold Wilson) and the leader of the Liberal Party (Mr Jeremy Thorpe) to join his plea. “Let this be the united call of Britain to the miner,” the Prime Minister said at a Conservative rally in Cardiff.

Noting that the 270,000 miners had now agreed to submit some parts of their wage case to the Government Pay Board, Mr Heath said: “The road to peace is open: if you, the miners, have the courage to admit it, your war is over.

“Every day the strike continues there is serious damage to your ■fellow-workers, and it is causing great hardship to the elderly and the sick.”

Also speaking in Cardiff, Mr Wilson criticised the Government for rising prices and British membershp of the Common Market, which now threatens to become a major election issue.

“To rising world prices the Government has added the price of the Common Market — the price we have to pay to subsidise the inefficient French farmer,” he said, adding: “The terms on which Mr Heath took Britain into the Market now present every family in this country with serious problems affecting their standards and style of living.”

Labour politicians appear confident that public disenchantment with Britain’s E.E.C. membership, and with the recent wrangles in Brussels, will be translated into votes for them in the coming election.

At a later press conference, delayed until the police had checked out a telephone threat that a bomb had been placed in the building, Mr Heath said that he did not regard European membership as an issue in the election.” “We are in, and we are going to stay in,” he declared. In a reference to Mr Wilson’s speech, he said acidlv that what the Leader of the Opposition had said was far from fact, and that he found it difficult to understand how any leading politician could have delivered such an address.

Mr Thorpe declared that the Liberals would not support any government which was going to pull Britain cut of Europe; but, he said, he did think that the present Government had not done enough to reform the Comtnunity. Tn a reference to the split between France and other countries at the Washington energy conference. Mr Thorpe said: “I think the French are being particularly bloody-minded, but the Communitv will survive.” Labour rebuttal The Labour Party later rebutted a claim by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Anthony Barber) that Labour’s election promises would require an extra £4ooom a year in public expenditure to pav for them. Mr Barber estimated that this would mean an all-round

increase in income tax of £2 a week, or about 7 per cent. (Labour has pledged food subsidies and better social services.) Mr Denis Healey, the Labour spokesman on economic affairs, accused the Chancellor of just about doubling the real cost of Labour’s programme. which he estimated at about £2ooom a year when completed. Mr Healey said that Mr Barber had taken no account of the £lsoom a Labour Government would derive from North Sea oil — which the party has promised to tax and nationalise.

The Chancellor has also assumed that Britain should be paying £soom to the Common Market budget in four years, as has been agreed by Mr Heath, but Labour totally rejects this,” Mr Healey said. Open letter One of Britain’s more moderate trade union leaders, Mr Jack Jones, has rejected the view that Britain is particularly strike-prone, and that her trade unions are dominated by extremists. In an open letter to British newspapers, Mr Jones called on politicians to stop their attacks on the unions, because, he said, this was creating a false image abroad of a heavily-divided Britain on the point of collapse. Several industrialists joined Mr Jones’s’ appeal to “get the record straight.” A spokesman for the London Chamber of Commerce said that in many respects, it supported the essence of what Mr Jones was saying. “We have decided to appoint a working party to look at the whole question of the British image abroad,” he said. "It will be led by a number of senior foreign industrialists working in Britain.” Mr Jones appealed to politicians not to ignore what had been an improved strike record last year, and the valuable co-operation between management and unions over industry’s threeday work week. Popularity poll According to the three latest public opinion polls, Mr Heath’s Conservative Party has leapt into a popular lead, varying from 1| to 11 per cent, in the run-in to Britain’s General Election. “The Times” publishes a survey by the Opinion Research Centre giving the Conservatives 42 per cent, the Labour Party 40 per cent, the Liberals 16 per cent, and others 2 per cent.

In the last similar survey, in January —■ before Mr Heath announced the election — Labour held a 3 per cent lead. A Gallup poll, appearing in the “Daily Telegraph,” shows the Conservatives with 441 per cent; Labout 43 per cent: Liberals, 11 per cent; and others. U per cent. This compares with a Gallup poll lead of 3 per cent for Labour a week before the announcement of the election.

A Louis Harris poll

published by the "Daily Express” puts the Conservatives out in front, with 46 pei cent, compared with Labour’s 35 per cent, 18 per cent for the Liberals, and 1 per cent for others.

In betting on the election the Conserv itives have hardened to 2-1 on; Labour is at 6-4 against: and the Liberals, 200 to 1 against.

Communists’ plan The Communist Party, which has not had a seat in Parliament for 25 years, yesterday announced plans to field 44 election candidates. Calling for the abolition of compulsory wage controls and the introduction of price restrictions, it answered w'ith this taunt Mr Heath’s accusation that Communist union leaders are trying to topple his Administration: “The Red scare is always the last refuge of the bankrupt political scoundrel.” Widespread voltage reductions of up to 6 per cent will be introduced today, to help to preserve fuel stocks at electricity power stations. The refusal of transport workers to cross the striking miners’ picket lines is stopping coal deliveries to power stations, and the Central Electricity Generating Board has warned the unions that they risk civil proceedings for breach of contract if they interrupt supplies. The confederation of British Industry disclosed today that industrial production has been maintained at about 70 per cent of normal since the three-day working week was imposed in January.