Save the food parcels

Press, 15 March 1979, Page 16

Save the food parcels

By

STUART McMILLAN,

, who recently visited Britain at the invitation of

the British Government.

By saying clearly that there will not be an election until the autumn, Mr Callaghan is obviously counting on two things. First, that this will give him enough time to demonstrate that the concordat is working and that Labour can again claim that it can work with the unions — which the Conservatives could not claim. Second, the cold weather will have passed. To observers of the British scene from this part of the world, the emphasis that British journalists give to the season of the year in discussing elections seems quaint. Viewed from the depths of a British winter the notion sits less oddly. People might indeed look more kindly on a Government just after the summer than when the snow lies around. Talk of sending food parcels from New Zealand to Britain during the lorrydrivers’ strike was one of the more eccentric overseas reactions to Britain’s industrial troubles. Temporary local shortages, some of which were caused by the lorry-drivers’ strike and were complicated by the weather, did occur. A local store in Bath, for instance, ran out of table salt. People used rock salt. London food stores, on the other hand, were stocked with a variety and abundance of food the like of which is not to be found in New Zealand.

Britain in February did not present the impression of a country under an economic or industrial siege. True, there were reports on television each evening of people who suffered as a result of industrial action. True, also, that there were rubbish .bags around London streets. But the rubbish bags were mostly tidy, failing to destroy the impression of a well-kept city. Nor did they prevent the flow of vehicles or pedestrians.

The Government and the Conservatives talked a great deal about strikes, the Government’s argument that it had a special relationship with the unions wearing a bit thin and the Conservatives’ demands for a tougher line with the unions not seeming, for its part, to find a public response that was overwhelming. Even in the inner councils of the Labour Party there was some feeling that an immediate election might well bring the Conservatives to power. But by November? The British Prime Minister (Mr Callaghan) claims that an agreement with the unions, called by some the concordat (though the term seems to be officially discouraged), has been reached. Mr Callaghan made his announcement about the election time before his Government was defeated on the votes in Wales and Scotland on limited home rule. These defeats give him all the

more reason to avoid an early election. The pay policy, the weather, and the rejection (for reasons that are not clear) of the devolution proposals, are too much for any Government, let alone a minority one, to seek any changes at present. The devolution proposals contain a basic threat to the Labour Party. If a National Assembly were established in Scotland, Scots could be able to rule on some Scottish matters and make decisions which affected those in the south. On the other hand Westminster’s powers over Scotland would be severely limited — a situation the Conservatives would find intolerable. Whenever they came to power they would be likely to alter the number of seats in Scotland. This would be so much to the detriment of Labour that it might find an election victory almost impossible. If Mr Callaghan can stumble through the next few months the prospects for his pay policy, the prospects for some compromise on devolution for Scotland, and even the weather prospects might improve. After all, “The Times” intends to reappear. In the meantime it would be a mistake for outsiders to regard the whole of Britain as a disaster area, or to consider that the British are doing other than adapting to a few irritants in their usual tolerant way. Save the food parcels.