It may not have been quite 'the shades of 1926'
which the leaders of Tuesday's unofficial general strike promised, but enough workers defied Tuc advice to stay at work to make the prospect of an even greater walkout in Jemmy decidedly discomfooing. In the event, though, this week's protest, such as it I was, was overshadowed by the performance of the electricity supply workers whose work to rule calculatedly cut the country's supply by 15 per cent and caused havoc on the roads and rails, in hospitals and homes. 'Mur- derers' cried hospital officials who found their heart-lung machines arbitrarily cut off. 'In- dustrial blackmail will not succeed' pro- claimed Mr Barber, 'even if . . people will have to start going to bed with candles'. And to bed with candles we went, to face the prospect of a cheerless Christmas as power failures grew longer and coal supplies dwindled till import licences were granted for the first time since the 1950s.
No sooner was he back from his hair-raising tour than the Pope found himself immersed in the great Divorce controversy. To the applause of 60,000 people massed in St Peter's Square he spoke of his 'bitterness' at the approval given, in his absence, of the Divorce Bill. Most Italian newspapers were jubilAnt, but the Vatican claimed that the Bill violated the 1929 Concordat between Pius xn and Mussolini and hinted cryptically at its approval of a referendum on the matter. Ironically, however, it was an ex- Vatican dignitary who was one of the first in thei queue to file a divorce. Prince Orsini, once of the Papal -order of Black Nobility and subsequently ostracised for his scanda- lous connection with Belinda Lee, announced that he would apply for a divorce against his wife, Princess Franca, on the very day the new law became effective.
More trouble in the air this week. With the Government finally disassociating itself from the BAC 3-11 airbus, it-sounded like the death- knell of this project and, possibly, its Euro- pean counterpart, the A300B. And across the. Atlantic Mr Nixon was having to fight a desperate rearguard action to salvage America's supersonic rival to Concorde, after the Senate had turned down a $290 million grant for further development. It was, claimed Senator Proxmire, a victory in the defence of 'the quality of life', and in their own small way, the anti-Concorde Project got the better of a skirmish with the Ministry of Agriculture down in Cornwall. The men from the Ministry, it seems, had been testing the effects of Concorde's sonic boom on glasshouses—by using fireworks, a series of experiments which critics dismissed as pro- ducing 'phoney facts'. But there was nothing phoney about the sparks produced in the opening round of the Battle of Gatwick, which airport is about to be extended 1,090 feet. The conservationists, flushed with their Stansted victory, have turned their attention to the Gatwick Inquiry which opened on Tuesday and which bears all the hallmarks of a protracted struggle:
One sadly disappointed aviator this weekend
was Walter Cornelius, man of Peter. borough. As he told4gRalinjuststk piece,
of suspect elastic stood between him and his successful attempt to fly across the River Nene. As it was Cornelius landed in the river, and his plans back on the drawing-board. Perhaps there is a lesson for him, the con• servationists, the airbussers and the super- sonics, to be learnt from the Great Bustard (which a Trust Fund is attempting to re- establish on Salisbury Plain). The great merit of this near-extinct bird, apart from its edibility, is apparently its reluctance to fly.
Few decisions in recent years have been so profoundly unpopular as General Franco's to try sixteen Basque nationalists by court martial (from which there is no appeal) rather than by a civil court. The Vatican pleaded for clemency, only to be brushed aside by the Spanish Government. Strikes, riots and even pray-ins have been reported from all parts of the Peninsula. Stories of 'systematic torture' of the accused emerged from the trial, a state of emergency was de- clared in Northern Spain, and the Basque 'government in exile' called for a national strike. As the trial was about to get under way, Basque extremists abducted the West German consul in San Sebastian and con- tinue to hold him as hostage for the lives of the arrested separatists. A note from him was received by his wife which displayed a commendably Teutonic concern for effici- ency. His over-riding concern, it seemed, was that she should take care of the correspond- ence piling up at the consulate.
A more fortunate diplomat was Mr James Cross, rescued this week two months to the day since he was captured by the Quebec Liberation Front. As Mr Cross relaxed in a Montreal hospital and received a message of congratulation from the Queen, his three captors and four of their fellow-conspirators made good their escape to Cuba. In Las Vegas the multi-millionaire, Howard Hughes, who almost never leaves his penthouse, was not in when police raided it this week. Rumours circulated immediately that he, too, had been kidnapped in a 'power struggle' for . his gambling business. In the neighbouring state of California another Hughes—Ronald Hughes, defence lawyer at the Sharon Tate murder trial—disappeared after his car was found abandoned. As a search was mounted in the Los Padres Forest, the prosecutor in the trial said 'This is serious'. It must have been. 'I said a prayer for him lait night% he added.
It was the first time 'Deutschland uber alles' had been heard in Poland since the war. With Herr Brandt's visit to Warsaw to sign a treaty recognising the Oder-Neisse border, the. 25-year breach. between West Germany and Poland was finally healed. Otherwise it was a miserable and petty week for inter; national relations generally. The East Paki- stan Government accused India of massac- ring 300 Pakistanis on Wednesday. The Swiss were upset because the United States warned Yehudi Menuhin that he was endangering his us citizenship by accepting honorary Swiss nationality. Israel was embarrassed and disturbed because Arab nationalists threatened to elect a communist Council in Nazareth. African nations demanded a formal UN condemnation of Porhigal for the recent invasion of Guinea. So one way and another, one shouldn't be surprised that fight- ing broke out last week at a United Nations committee between France, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia. The Rumanian chairman, Mme Maria Groza, quite understandably burst into tears and the meeting was ad- journed as. guards, pulled the delegates apart,
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