'Nothing in this world can ever be free'

Ex-PM Heath

is chatty here

While Americans fret about an inflation rate that has crept up to 7% annually, the British are thankful that their own rate has been damped down to that same figure.

Not long ago the British rate was 26% per year, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath said here yesterday.

Heath is here for an appearance Friday night as conductor and narrator with the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center.

"Part of the problem," he said at a news conference, “is that we are a very small country. You cannot do something in one part of it without the rest of the country knowing, and very soon they all want the same thing. It is a major difficulty in our wage negotiations.”

While he was prime minister from 1970 to 1974, Heath said his administration studied American industrial relations practices and adapted some of them into its own legislative program. Heath declined to speculate on how the British economy will go under the present Labor party regime.

He characterized Laborite Prime Minister James Callaghan as a very cautious man.

The former prime minister would not comment on the current scandal involving Jeremy Thorpe, leader of Britain's Liberal party. He denied ⚫ the truth of the saying that political scandals in the United States revolve around money while those in Britain revolve around sex, remarking, "I've never considered Washington particularly sexless." The Thorpe scandal has homosexual overtones.

Heath called the government-financed National Health Service introduced after World War II by the Labor party a great boon to the British people in the long run.

• The musical side of Edward Heath. Page 9-D.

He warned, however, that its financial problems are increasing as the cost of medical services increases. Its original sponsor, Aneurin Bevan, made a big mistake, he said, when he described it as free health service.

"Nothing in this world can ever be free," he said. "You may not pay for it as you pay your doctor, but you pay for it in taxation. It really created a wrong atmosphere to call it free, and since then every attempt to increase its resources from contributions has been met with the accusation that it was supposed to be free.

"If we were starting again, we would have a different ratio between the tax contribution and the individual contributions."

Heath minimized the importance of agitation for the independence of Scotland from England. The Scots' wish for more of a share in their own affairs, he said, has been spurred by discovery of oil under the North Sea and the question of where future oil revenues will go. Some of them may indeed go directly to Scotland, he surmised.

Heath warned against excessive optimism over the downturn in viclence in Northern Ireland. Efforts in the United States to curb the flow of cash and arms to that region have, been of enormous value, he said, but added:

"Don't be too hasty. This has happened before a period of less violence after which it has increased again. I was in Dublin just last week and found that the people there realize the situation just cannot go on as it has been."