Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Such comments, however hyperbolic, are apparently well deserved. Last week, as Britain's Labor Party gathered amid the fading Victorian splendors of the North Seaside resort of Scarborough, Prime Minister Wilson turned what might have been a repudiation of his policies into a rousing personal endorsement. Harold Wilson may not be invincible, but he is certainly inventive. Few British Prime Ministers have man aged to make so many problems seem like golden opportunities...
Wilson arrived in Scarborough in the midst of the worst slump since he led Labor to power in 1964. Despite his efforts, the economy remained stagnant (see BUSINESS). Unemployment, at 555,000, was the worst in 27 years, and the trade gap continued to widen, endangering the stability of sterling. Wilson was under attack from just about every faction in his own party-old-line socialists, because he has resorted to Tory-style restrictions on consumer credit and travel allowances; trade unionists, because he has imposed a freeze on wages; intellectuals, because he seemed only concerned with pragmatics; left-wingers...
Exchequer James Callaghan, 55, took on the task of softening the 1,206 delegates on the crucial economic issue. Bright and incisive, yet unmistakably working-class, Callaghan buttressed his own claim to the No. 2 spot in the Labor Party by successfully presenting Wilson's unpopular deflationary policies as the only sensible way to deal with the "mess" left over from 13 years of Tory rule. Though self-taught in economics (his education ended at the secondary level), Callaghan has a thorough grasp of world finance, and he explained the necessity of tough measures in a common-sense...
...thing that proved a bit embarrassing for the Labor Party was an incident involving the ebullient George Brown, who is known to enjoy his drink. At a ball for party workers, some 30 photographers zeroed in on the Foreign Secretary. The persistence of the photographers so enraged Brown that he stomped off the floor, shouting that they had prevented him from dancing in peace with his wife Sophie...
Brown's fit of pique led the normally pro-Labor Daily Mirror, whose 5,000,000 circulation makes it London's largest tabloid, to take off after him. "The trouble about Mr. Brown is not that he drinks too much," said the Mirror, "but that he shouldn't drink at all. Genial George was born with so much natural ebullience that all it needs is a splash of soda to make his behavior intolerable. A double soda will, at the drop of a hat, make George the life and soul of the party...