PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
President de Gaulle dismissed M Georges Pompidou, Prime Minister of France since 1962 and victor of last month's general election. M Couve de Murville, M Pompidou's successor, was thought more likely to see eye to eye with the President about the policy of `participation' —by workers in management—as the remedy for France's troubles. With a further drain on French reserves as the Queen's horse, Hopeful Venture, took the £50,000 Prix de Saint-Cloud, the Banque de France could contribute nothing but sympathy to a new $2,000 million standby credit designed to protect the pound from fluctuations in the sterling balances.
This credit, arranged at a meeting of the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, was announced by the Governor of the Bank of England at London Airport and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons. There was no question, said the Chancellor, of a July budget. The Government's incomes policy seemed challenged by the terms on which the railway dispute was settled—a pay rise to- day against greater productivity tomorrow; but Mr Len Neal, head of labour relations for British Railways, expressed confidence that the unions would keep their side of the bargain by their deadline of 2 September. Municipal bus workers had their pay frozen for a further five months.
In the Labour party there was more manoeuv- ring for the secretaryship: a group of mem- bers suggested that the job should be advertised anew, none of the thirty-six previous applicants having proved acceptable. Other members attacked Mr Douglas Houghton for his advo- cacy of child-rationing: others again put down a motion of censure on the editor of The Times, for failing to publish a letter which one of them had written. But the week's major dispute was within the Conservative party. Eight members of the executive of the 1922 Committee, in defiance of Mr Heath and the shadow cabinet, tabled a `reasoned amendment' to the third read- ing of the Race Relations Bill, and later forty- five Conservative MPS voted against the Bill.
The Monopolies Commission opposed a merger of Barclays, Lloyds, and Martins Banks, but not by the two-thirds majority needed before the President of the Board of Trade could for- bid the union: Mr Crosland said he would have to think about it. The Home Office re- turned Mr Alan Winnington's passport to him, after a confiscation that lasted fourteen years: Mr Winnington, a correspondent of the Morn- ing Star, had incurred official displeasure during the Korean War.
Sir Alexander cadogan and Sir Roy Dobson died—the head of the Foreign Office through- out the war, and the man responsible for the Lancaster bomber.
The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (announced Professor Patrick Blackett), was to exhibit dehydrated soup, supplied to Captain Cook as a precaution against scurvy on his voyages to the Pacific Ocean 200 years ago.
Previous page
