August 28, 1983

LONDON THERE is an old saying here that British politicians should not tangle with three institutions. One is the monarchy. Another is the church. And the third is the British coal miner. Coal's centuries-old role in British energy and the miners' militant tradition has turned their periodic confrontations with British Governments into dramatic struggles. Those struggles frequently upset economic policies, and in 1974 a miners' strike for higher wages brought down the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, by forcing him to call an election, which he lost.

IF practice makes perfect, then the people who would organize an evacuation in case of an accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plants may have taken a step toward perfection last Tuesday, when they made a third attempt to show the Federal Government that enough buses would be available to carry people without automobiles. The bus drill, which was followed by a bigger test of emergency capabilities in Rockland County Wednesday, was held as part of a promise made by the state last spring to the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, that New York and the utilities would try to correct those two "significant deficiencies" in the emergency planning for Indian Point. The commission had been threatening to close the two plants, which are in Buchanan and operated by the Consolidated Edison Company of New York and the New York Power Authority. The Emergency Management Agency said in an April report on the March 9 drill that the transportation plan in Westchester was not adequate, partly because the county did not have agreements in place with the bus companies to supply the vehicles, and because some bus drivers had said they would not be willing to drive toward the plant during an accident.

NORMAN, Okla. THE football field was littered with reporters and photographers and television crews. They had come from Ada and Enid, from Duncan and Lawton, from Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Muskogee and Shawnee, from almost any place where Oklahoma football is more than a game. Then there were the fans, dozens and dozens of fans, with their own cameras and pens, eager for a rare opportunity to meet their Oklahoma Sooners in person. And they were all there, almost. That morning, as the mobs were on their way to Owen Field, there was a telephone call for Barry Switzer, the football coach. The call was from Ken Fairley, a friend of Marcus Dupree, the greatest freshman rusher in Oklahoma history. Fairley was making the 12-hour drive here from Philadelphia, Miss., with Dupree and his mother. He was calling to tell Switzer that this ride would be much longer than 12 hours. Switz er's tailback was somewhere outside Little Rock, Ark. There had been car trouble. They were going to be late.

A military shield was applied last week in Chad by 3,000 of France's best troops. Whi,e they manned a line against furth?r advances southward by Libyan-backed rebels, President Francois Mitterrand tried diplomacy to end the fighting and preserve the former French colony from what he saw as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's designs on Islamic Africa. Paris no longer spoke of ''advisers'' or ''instructors.'' In a long interview with Le Monde, Mr. Mitterrand issued a warning to Colonel Qaddafi: France has the means, ''if necessary, to answer militarily and quickly any new offensive.'' There has been a lull in the fighting and Mr. Mitterrand asserted the French intervention had been decisive in bringing it about. Explaining why France had waited so long, to Washington's distress, the President said he wanted it to be clear to the world that the aggression came from Libya and that he did not wish to embroil France in a civil war. Two American Awacs planes, sent early on to Sudan to monitor Libyan air and ground movements, were withdrawn last week with the explanation that the military stalemate made their presence no longer necessary. They were part of the tiff between Paris and Washington, which Mr. Mitterrand said had now been settled.

ANDREW CUOMO, the Governor's son and adviser, crouched in front of a map of the state's counties last week, pointed to Suffolk and Nassau and declared, "The Island will be swing." The 25-year-old Mr. Cuomo has been assigned by his father to help sell the "Rebuild New York Bond Issue" to a voting public that has often resisted appeals to increase the state's indebtedness. If Andrew Cuomo and a cadre of other gubernatorial advisers assigned to the task convince enough New Yorkers to vote "yes" in November, the Cuomo administration will be authorized to spend $1.25 billion on improvements to the state's net-work of roads, bridges, rails, ports and mass transportation. Armed with enough past performance statistics to rival a tout at Belmont, Andrew Cuomo has concluded that the suburban voters of Long Island, Westchester and three or four counties upstate constitute the swing needed to win bond issue approval this fall.