PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
One hundred thousand people came to Atlanta, Georgia, for the funeral of Martin Luther King, the American negro leader. His assassination was the signal for riots, arson and shootings in many American cities. Troops patrolled the streets, and a machine-gun post was set up on the steps of the White House.
President Johnson established contact with Hanoi, and the North Vietnamese showed signs of dropping their demand for a halt to bombing as a precondition for talks. Khe Sanh . was relieved, and on Wall Street, after two largely glum years, shares were racing upwards.
Mr Patrick Gordon Walker, deposed from office in Mr Wilson's government for the second time, wrote briefly to send his good wishes to the Government and to Mr Wilson. Few more positive responses were evoked by the Wilson Cabinet Mark Two. It was discovered that a 'transfer of functions order' under the Ministers of the Crown Act was needed before Mrs Castle could assume the style of Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity.
A more significant political change, so it was thought, came from Canada, where Mr Pierre Trudeau, only two and a half years after his entry, into Parliament, was elected to succeed Mr Lester Pearson as leader of the . Liberal party and Prime Minister: a French Canadian, a federalist, a reported millionaire, and a bachelor of forty-six with a fondness for skin-diving, parties, and a white Mercedes.
For aviation, a difficult week. The public . accounts committee of the House of Com- mons, returning to the charge against Bristol , Siddeley, complained of 'negligence and irre- sponsibility.' A finding that at no point were . the witnesses—the company's business director and the former chairman—knowingly trying to mislead was carried by the committee chair- • , man's casting,. vote.. A Boeing 707 of _BOAC caught fire soon after taking off from London Airport: the pilot landed the plane, and all but five of the 126 people on board escaped. In the courts, it was held that when a man was on trial for his livelihood—in this case, a greyhound trainer before the stewards—he was entitled to be represented by counsel. New courts and new rights were foreshadowed in the Race Relations Bill, which incorporates wide powers to penalise racial discrimination in employment, housing, insurance, education and advertising; and the 1968 Finance Bill also made its appearance. Mr Tony Richard- son, despairing of the judgment of his critics, refused to invite them to • The Charge of the Light Brigade; and the manager of the Royal Court Theatre said that a play in which Queen Victoria falls' in love with-Florence Nightingale had been staged against his will.
Jim Clark, twice champion motor-racing driver of the world, met his death at Hocken- heim in Germany, when 'his car left the road at 170 m.p.h. and hit a tree. Kenneth Allpress. chairman of William Press, left £3 million, five sixths 'Of which went to the Treasury.
Having discovered the torso of a young lady in a train at Wolverhampton and the legs of a young lady on the Essex foreshore, the police were reported to conclude that they were connected; and the locomotives of British Rail- ways were being bombarded under pressure with fragments of apricot stones, plum stones, nutshells and minute glass beads mixed with a solvent. This cleaned them.
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