PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Gaybusters!
Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, was urged to contemplate a referendum on the European Community in an attempt to avoid disastrous losses for the Conservative interest in next month's European elec- tions. He said he was 'sceptical'. In the local elections at home, out of 4,975 local seats contested, the Conservatives suffered a net loss of 888, Labour a net gain of 88 and the Liberal Democrats a gain of 388. The Con- servatives retained Westminster and Wandsworth, where the dustbins are regu- larly emptied: the British National Party lost its only seat, in Tower Hamlets, which fell to Labour. Mr Denis McShane won the constituency of Rotherham in a parliamen- tary by-election, with a reduced majority; the Loony Party won almost half the share of the Tory vote. A Government Whip, Mr Michael Brown, who is not a household name, resigned after a newspaper claimed that he had a homosexual relationship which he denies. Another newspaper claimed that Mr Major didn't mind mem- bers of the Government being homosexual, as long as they didn't do anything silly. Mr Nicholas Scott, the Social Security minister, apologised for misleading the House in sug- gesting that the Government was not behind a string of amendments that killed the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. The Commons voted in favour of the legali-
sation of betting shops opening for Sunday racing. A Commons committee voted against the building of the CrossRail line through London. Mr John Patten, the Edu- cation Secretary, published proposals for a reduced national curriculum. A surgeon removed the wrong kidney from a little boy by mistake. The UVF shot dead a 76-year- old woman on purpose. The Archbishop of Canterbury ordained 22 women as priests. Lady Victoria Wemyss died, aged 104. Cof- fee prices rose to a high of $1,920 a ton. A lamb in formaldehyde, the work of Damien Hirst, said to have been sold for £25,000, had paint poured over it in a gallery and the caption 'Black Sheep' stuck on it.
MR NELSON Mandela, aged 75, head of the African National Congress and the new President of South Africa, wearing a white flower in his buttonhole, embraced Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the main- ly Zulu lnkatha Party, during the first sit- ting of a parliament elected by universal suffrage. Mr Mandela found himself sitting next to his estranged wife, wearing a green hat, whom he refused to acknowledge. Mr Thabo Mbeki, a former communist, became first deputy president: Mr F.W. de Klerk, the former president, became sec- ond deputy president. The ANC had nar- rowly failed to win the two-thirds majority
necessary for them to change the constitu- tion on their own. In Rwanda Patriotic Front rebels and government forces kept on killing each other and anyone in between at a great rate and no other coun- tries intervened, despite appeals from Mr Boutros Boutros Ghali, the Secretary-Gen- eral of the United Nations. In Yemen the civil war continued, with northern forces advancing on Aden, the southern capital: thousands of Marxist books found in the south were said to have been burnt. PLO police entered Gaza and the area around Jericho under the agreement with Israel. Mr Silvio Berlusconi, the new Italian Prime Minister, chose five neo-fascists to join his cabinet. The Japanese minister for justice resigned after he denied that Japanese sol- diers had ever massacred some 300,000 people in Nanking after having invaded China. Mongolia proposed compensation for those persecuted during 70 years of Soviet domination there. Former commu- nists were on the way to power after win- ning the first round of the Hungarian elec- tions. The Revolutionary Democrat Party, with a millionaire candidate, won the presi- dential elections in Panama, the first since the United States invaded four years ago. George Peppard, the five-times married film actor, died, aged 65.
CSH
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