ALSO OF NOTE IN BRITAIN

* British government officials are more aggrieved than others in Europe at threatened stiff new United States duties on imported steel.

The issue, a big one here, was to be raised by Foreign Secretary Francis Pym with US Secretary of State George P. Shultz in Washington July 29.

United States ''countervailing tariffs'' of as high as 40 percent will be imposed if current talks do not succeed by Aug. 24 because of British subsidies to the nationalized British Steel Corporation. The US says the subsidies are unfair - but officials here reply that the biggest payments were for restructuring the industry and paying bonuses to men laid off. The overall aim was to reduce the British steel industry, not expand it.

* Church clashed with state over the Falklands war service at St. Paul's Cathedral July 26. Conservative members of Parliament, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher herself, wanted triumphant thanks for victory over Argentina and for the return of the task force, as well as remembrance of the fallen.

The Church of England, however, saw little reason for jingoistic rejoicing. The Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon denounced war and the international arms trade, and said specifically that God cannot be ''wheeled up'' to endorse one side or the other. Asked why the word ''victory'' was omitted from the service, and why ''Onward Christian Soldiers'' was not sung, Dean Alan Webster of St. Paul's replied: ''Because our Christian soldiers were fighting other Christian soldiers.'' One Tory MP lashed out at what he called ''cringing clerics,'' but many others applauded.

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