— Portrait of the Week —
REVOLUTIONS ARE IN and the murdered body of General Kassem of Iraq was shown on Iraqi tele- vision to prove it. On Friday morning the heavily armed Ministry of Defence buildings were attacked from the air. By the end of the day the Revolutionary Command led by Abdul Salam Muhammad Aref, himself the main supporter of Kassem in the 1958 revolution, was in power. President Nasser's congratulations and British and American recognition followed shortly after. Mr. Roy Thomson was meanwhile leading a party of British businessmen to Moscow to celebrate the first birthday of the Sunday Times colour supple- ment. In a two-hour interview Mr. Thomson lectured Mr. Khrushchev on different roads to capitalism, agreed with his opinions on abstract art but hit the wrong note in suggesting a Western- Soviet alliance against Communist China. At the same time the British Government expressed its willingness to consider an Anglo-Russian oil-for- ships deal.
MR ROSWELL GILPATRIC, American deputy Secretary of Defence, arrived in Europe look- ing for Polaris bases, though his visit to Spain was postponed. In Italy he announced that the three Polaris submarines which would be operating in the Mediterranean would be based at Holy Loch. At the military court in Paris M. Jean Marie Bastien-Thiry, on trial for leading the attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, insisted that the plan was to bring the General to trial for treachery, and that the Minister for Finance, M. Giscard D'Estaing, knew all about it and might well have been Prime Minister in the new govern- ment. In Belgium, university professors at Liege and Ghent suspended lectures for a week in a demand for a salary increase and eighty-six Roman butchers were convicted for adding patent Powders to meat to improve its appearance.
THE GOVERNOR OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND, Lord Cromer, announced in Pretoria that there was still a lot of prejudice in Britain against South Africa's Policies. Mr. Nkomo, leader of the banned ZAPU, was arrested, shortly after being released, for taking part in an illegal procession, but several whites bearing placards with 'Heil, the police state,' and 'Don't outdo Verwoerd' gathered outside the Southern Rhodesian Parliament in protest against the Rhodesian Front's proposed policy of death for petrol bombing. Indian troops in the Congo are being withdrawn, rebellion broke out against the Central Government in the Diamond State of South Kasai, and President Tshombe left Katanga with fourteen suitcases for a week in Paris seeing an eye-specialist, to be followed by some time in Switzerland seeing a stomach specialist.
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AT HOME PARLIAMENT spent two days debating the conduct of the Common Market negotiations. Mr, Macmillan announced there would be a Com- monwealth Trade Ministers' meeting very soon, adding that the reason given for the cancellation of Princess Margaret's visit to Paris was only diplomatic doublctalk; for the Opposition Mr. Wilson rivalled Mr. Brown in trying to sway a few votes in the party leadership contest, though the best speech of all came from the defeated candidate, Mr. James Callaghan. Mr. Heath descended again to the arena of party politics and the Government won, THE NATIONAL INCOMES COMMISSION began the pub- lic hearing of its first case, the inquiry into the forty-hour-week settlement in the Scottish build- ing and plumbing trades. The National Union of General and Municipal Workers voted against the strike called at Ford's, Dagenham, for February 18 and an electricity transformer at a new reservoir in North Wales was blown up, seemingly by Welsh Nationalists in protest against the rape of Tryweryn by Liverpool Corporation.
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