The Trials of Harold

The rage among British cartoonists these days is to picture Harold Wilson in the buff, thus reflecting Britain's denuded estate. Though he frequently comes out looking quite cherubic, the cartoonists' jabs are just one of the painfully bare facts of life that Britain's Prime Minister has to face in the nadir of his popularity. As he leaves for Washington this week for his first talks in eight months with Lyndon Johnson, Wilson finds himself under fire from almost every direction. So bitter has the criticism become that Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor, recently rose in the House of Lords and declared: "There has recently been in the papers a vicious vilification and denigration of the Prime Minister which has passed all bounds of decency."

TV skits constantly jab at Wilson, editorialists attack him regularly, and political hounds of every breed yap at his heels. Even the left and right wings of Wilson's Labor Party are in the full cry of revolt. Veteran Right Wing M.P. Desmond Donnelly has bucked party discipline, and called for Wilson's resignation. Says Laborite M.P. Reginald Paget: "It really boils down to the fact that Harold Wilson has reached the stage which Lloyd George reached at a certain point--that no one in the world believes a word he says."

Credibility Gap. There are plenty of reasons for the British disenchantment with Wilson: the turndown of Britain's application to the Common Market, Britain's shrinking role as a world power, the retreat from East of Suez, austerity at home and the feeling that Wilson has equivocated in his statements to the country--a Wilsonian credibility gap that is equal to Lyndon Johnson's. Wilson has heatedly denounced "the defeatist cries, the moaning minnies, the wet editorials," but he seems unable to halt his rapid slide. A new national poll released last week on the eve of Wilson's departure for Washington showed that the Tories are leading the Laborites by 18.3% among the voters--enough to cost Wilson 200 of his 354 seats if elections were held now (Wilson does not have to call them until 1971).

While Lyndon Johnson will be able to pull some polls from his pocket to show that his popularity has begun an upswing after a long decline, Harold Wilson's notices are dominated by those embarrassing cartoons. The most telling one, run in the Daily Mail, was a biting play on names, involving Wilson and Britain's Great Train Robber Charles Wilson, who was captured in Quebec two weeks ago. The cartoon showed two trusties chatting outside Robber Wilson's jail cell: "Like the proverb says, Fingers, you can fool some of the people some of the time--but having a name like Wilson makes it difficult."

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