Portrait of the week
°The Secretary of State for Trade and
Industry, Mr Cecil Parkinson, an- nounced that his former secretary, Miss Sara Keays, was expecting his baby in January. He had given her, and apparently her father, his 'assurance' that he would marry her, but had then been persuaded by his family to remain with his wife. Mrs Thatcher said that the question of Mr Parkinson's resignation did not arise, but several MPs viewed the matter rather dif- ferently, saying he had failed to do the de- cent thing and divorce his wife. Only one MP, however, Mr Ivor Stanbrook, was prepared to identify himself and say public- ly that Mr Parkinson should resign. A writ for libel was issued by Miss Keays against Private Eye for having mentioned an alleg- ed relationship with another Conservative MP, Marcus Fox. An inquiry by a group of Young Conservatives, conducted with Mr Parkinson's approval when chairman of the party, concluded that several right-wing Tory MPs were closely associated with 'ex- treme and racialist forces'. Its findings were leaked two days before the Conservative conference, which opened at Blackpool to criticism of the many blunders presided over by the Government since the general election last June. By contrast the Labour Party was said to have had its most suc- cessful conference for years, giving the im- pression of a new spirit of unity under Mr Kinnock's leadership. However, Mr Kin- nock was careful to make no statement about Labour's defence 'policy', and Mr Wedgwood Berm succeeded in upsetting the national executive, of which he is a member, by advocating the unification of Ireland without the consent of the Unionists. In Belfast, an agreement was signed for the supply of natural gas to Ulster from the Republic's Kinsale field in the Irish Sea.
Llive Super-Etendard fighter bombers, equipped with Exocet missiles, were promised to Iraq by the French govern- ment. Fearing an escalation of the three- year-old Gulf war, Iran threatened to block the Persian Gulf across the Strait of Hor- muz if Iraq were to bomb the Iranian oil terminal at Kharg Island. Mr Yitzhak Shamir, the former terrorist leader of the Stern Gang, was formally sworn in as prime minister of Israel, the seventh since the State of Israel was founded in 1948. His first priority was to deal with the economic crisis, cutting food subsidies and devaluing the shekel by 23 per cent. The British Government refused to supply North Sea oil to Israel. Russia delivered SS21 missiles, which have a range of 75 miles, to Syria, and in Lebanon the Druze and Shia militias agreed to allow troops from EEC countries to observe the cease-fire in the Chouf mountains, where 30,000 Christians were said to be surrounded in the village of Pair al Qamar. In Rangoon, four South Korean cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister, Mr Lee Bum Suk, were among 19 killed by a bomb explosion, for which North Korea was blamed. In Tokyo, a former prime minister, Kakuei Tanaka, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, but released pending appeal, for accepting bribes from the Lockheed Corporation. In Beauvais, northern France, a butcher was charged with stabbing to death his girl ) friend and five members of her family.
Sir Ralph Richardson died at the age of 80 after a short illness. William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, though described by one member of the Academy as 'a little English phenomenon of no special interest'. In Plymouth Sound, the Royal Navy scattered the ashes of Len Wincott, who led the In- vergordon Mutiny in 1931 and spent most of the rest of his life in Moscow, where he died last January at 75. Having sacked Geoffrey Boycott, the Yorkshire County Cricket Club was persuaded to consider allowing the great man to play for one more year; an Englishman, Richard Noble, set a new world land speed record, driving a car in Nevada at 633 m.p.h. Lord Taylor of Blackburn, created a life peer in 1978 for services to education, was released from a hospital to which he had been committed under the Mental Health Acts, after he had started proceedings to challenge his deten- tion; Lady Taylor said she had applied to have her husband committed because of his alcoholism. A group known as One for Christian Renewal proposed that the term Iclergyperson' should be used in future, that God should be referred to as 'the father/mother" and never 'he', and that, while Christ was acknowledged to be male,
this fact should not be emphasised. SPC 'He's our new political correspondent,'
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