‘Is There Cure for British Disease?’

I was sorry to see the article by Keyes Beech (Opinion, Jan. 5), “Is There a Cure for the ‘British Disease?’ ” and that it still seems to be fashionable in some quarters to run Britain down.

It may be of interest to those who read the article to know that in 1985 Britain probably had a higher growth rate than any other European country and, incidentally, the United States of America.

Most forecasts for the U.S. economy project 1985 growth in the 3% range. In Britain, it is expected to have been 3.5%. Moreover, our balance of payments last year is confidently predicted to have been in surplus on current account by some $4.3 billion (as compared with a projected U.S. trade deficit of some $140 billion).

We do still have a problem of unemployment, but perhaps less well known is the fact that Britain has created in the last three years more new jobs than all the rest of the European Community put together: some 600,000.

Clearly knowing when they are on to a good thing, American industrialists have shown confidence in the British economy to the extent of investing more than $45 million in it up to the end of 1984: far more than in any other European country. And no less than 134 U.S. firms announced plans in that year to locate or expand facilities in the United Kingdom.

There is no doubt that the end of the first World War heralded a great deal of social change in Britain. We do not regret that, any more than we regret, as Beech seems to do, our having divested ourselves with some credit of an empire, which covered a quarter of the globe. It has admittedly taken us time to adjust to both experiences, as it is taking us time to convert our manufacturing base from the “smokestack” industries of the past to the higher technologies of the future. But I can assure Beech that we are suffering from nothing that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s medicine will not cure.

DONALD F. BALLENTYNE

Consul-General

of Great Britain

Los Angeles