—Portrait of the Week— MR. MACLEOD MOVED up; the Labour
Party Con- ference broke up; and Bank rate went down.
Nto. MACMILLAN RESHUFFLED HIS CABINET, giving Mr. Macleod more power and Mr. Butler less, lust in time for the Conservative Party Confer- ence at Brighton. One of the changes was to put io another minister at the Treasury to share the Work (and, no doubt, the popularity) of Mr.
7 Lloyd, who reduced Bank rate from / per cent. to 6f per cent., warning the City of London that this was 'certainly not an indication that the time had come to relax on any part of our policy.' All the same, the Minister of Labour aPProved pay increases for a quarter of a million Workers, among them lorry drivers, who other- wise would certainly have struck. As it was, some London busmen struck over winter services, which meant less overtime. At Ford's the strike in a tea-cup temporarily subsided. Jaguar cars bought Guy Motors, who make commercial Vehicles, and there was a merger. between Mecca (restaurants, Bingo and ballroom dancing) and Portds (restaurants, milk bars and Battersea Fun Pair).
IT, LOOKED AS THOUGH the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed on an acting Secretary- General of the United Nations, U Thant, for which relief many people said Thank U. But t-ilks on Berlin between Mr. Gromyko and Presi- dent Kennedy in Washington and between Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Macmillan-in London didn't seem to get very far. In Moscow, western peace- marchers discussed nuclear testing with Mrs. Khrushehev, who was reported by Reuters to „have stared at her plate and sighed heavily. Moscow University students shouted down dons who tried to change the subject when the marchers addressed them; and at Poetry Day e,elebrations in the same city there were cheers 'Or Evgeny Evtushenko, who had recently attacked Russian anti-Semitism in verse, and who resPonded to the ovation by quoting from his Nin works the line, 'I will remain firm to the end and never become an unctuous bootlicker,' Which led to speculation among other poets as to What the other lines must have been like.
1..11E GOVERNOR OF KENYA BLAMED the African National Union, the chief opposition party, for the breakdown of constitutional talks. Compli- ments were exchanged in a joint communiqué from Accra after the talks between Dr. Nkrumah it clear Mr. Sandys; Buckingham Palace tacitly made clear that the Queen still proposed to visit Ghana; there was the promise of a Ghanaian White Paper on the arrest of opposition MPs; and the Ghanaian Government decided to send four hundred officer-cadets to Moscow for train- ing. The Uganda constitutional conference broke leaving some problems still unsolved, but With independence fixed for next year. The Con- golese Minister of Youth and Sport made an official statement on local football: 'Referees, linemen and players are frequently attacked and some fans even go so far as to burn cars and houses and threaten people with death.' He observed that this was not only anti-social but unsporting.
TRIsTAN DA CUNHA WAS EVACUATED after a vol- ;Pik eruption. At a press conference held in Heup by Prince Souvanna Phouma, Prince
announced and Prince Boun Oum it was ",nouneed that Prince Boun Oum would go with
tell Phoumi Nosavan to Luang Prabang to n1 King Savang Watthana that the new Laotian Government should consist of four left-wingers, ',Mir right-wingers and eight neutrals. Experts on Laotian politics went as far as Geneva to elicit from well-informed circles the prognostication that this 'could be a major breakthrough.'
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