PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
In Northern Ireland, loyalist extremists every night attacked the homes and fami-. lies of policemen. The Chief Constable said 14 officers had fled their homes in the last week, and declared that there was a `very sinister hand' behind the attacks, without saying whose it was. The IRA murdered a UDR man. Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education, told the conference of the second biggest teaching union that he was appalled by the damage deliberately inflicted on children's educa- tion by some teachers during the recent pay dispute. Only one delegate out of 1,200 tried to clap at the end of his speech. Sir Keith's deputy, Mr Chris Patten, fore- saw 'a yob society' if the organisation of education did not improve: a national system might be needed. Mr Neil Kinnock threatened a mass purge of Militant Tendency supporters from the Labour Party by introducing a new disciplinary code at the next conference. In an inter- view with the Italian paper La Stampa, Mr Denis Healey cast doubt on Mr Kinnock's ability to win the next election, for he `lacks experience'. Dixons, an electrical goods retailer, made a £1.8 billion takeov- er bid for Woolworths, part of an extraor- dinary level of takeover activity in the City. Mr Rupert Murdoch offered to let the print unions take over the old Times presses and building in Gray's Inn Road for nothing. Six people died in a helicopter crash in Oxfordshire. Swan Hunter arranged for Lady Stanford to launch HMS Coventry at night, for fear that strikers might stop a launch during the day.
FOUR passengers on an American airliner approaching Athens were killed, one by an explosion under his seat which also blew a hole in the fuselage, the other three when together with the dead man they were sucked out of the plane at a height of 11,000 feet. Colonel Gaddafi denied that he was involved. A bomb in a West Berlin discotheque killed two people and injured over 200 others, including at least 35 Americans. West Germany expelled two Libyan diplomats. In South Africa, vio- lence continued in black townships and Mrs Winnie Mandela, in the first interview with her to be published in a South African newspaper for over a decade, called on the, rest of the world to impose 'immediate and total sanctions'. In New York, Wildman, 3 botanist who for five years had been breaking the law by eating plants in Cen" tral Park, was at last apprehended. British interest rates fell, and the French franc was devalued by six per cent against the deuts- chemark. Stalin's 14-year-old granddaugh- ter was granted an exit visa from the Soviet Union to return to school at Saffron Walden. Sir Peter Pears, England's most celebrated tenor, died, as did Lieutenant' Commander William Boaks, the noted by-election candidate. West Tip won the Grand National, the West Indies easily won the fourth Test against England, and Ian Botham denied allegations by a former Miss Barbados that he had taken cocaine while on tour, and that they had made `wonderful, wonderful love'. AJSO
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