Word: heaths
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...measures, possibly higher taxes, are being drawn up to deal with Britain's lopsided balance of payments deficit. Shortly before Heath's address, the government announced a preliminary November trade deficit of $621 million. This follows October's record $821 million deficit. There was speculation last week that the timing of Heath's announcement-on the eve of the Copenhagen summit of Common Market leaders-meant that he might seek EEC help to offset Britain's deficit. There is "an acute danger," as Heath has noted, that his deflationary measures could spread to Europe...
...result of this critical situation will be that Heath's grand economic strategy will be put on ice. Running his budget deficit to an unprecedented high and covering it by borrowing abroad, Heath gambled early in his term that the huge injection of cash into the nation's economy would force-feed British industry into speedy growth. But winning the gamble depended on two assumptions: first, that world commodity prices would come down from their record highs, and second, that workers would moderate their wage claims. Both proved to be false. By late summer it became obvious that...
...crisis flows from an unresolved flaw in British society of the '70s: the inequitable distribution of the rewards of labor. The inequalities have become all the more painfully abrasive during the Heath government's concerted drive to lift the British economy to a new plateau of sustained growth. It was a central part of Heath's strategy that Britain's labor unions could be persuaded to hold down their pay demands. But in observing the lavish profits that have accrued to Britain's financial and property speculators over the past year, the unions have...
...raising the calamitous scenario of hundreds of thousands of other union members being thrown onto short-time or out of work altogether, Heath is plainly playing high-stakes British roulette. He rigidly insists that if he gives in to the three angry unions, his Phase III wage-control program will be in tatters. But with the prospect of industrial Armageddon on the near horizon, he has left a door open for himself to work out a generous 'special case' settlement for the three. Such a solution would not resolve all the demands for equality of sacrifice...
...miners, railmen and power engineers to go to the head of the line for wage increases. If they still refuse to go back to work, the three-day week should have one salutary effect: the cooling of Britain's overheated economy. Thus, literally under cover of darkness, Heath will have covered his retreat from his economic gamble...