— Portrait of the Week— YET AGAIN, at the first whiff
of wintry weather, British Railways wilted. Trains were cancelled,
timetables abandoned, and hints were given that services might be really disrupted should it actually snow. Power cuts became a possibility,
and pools promoters prepared to revive the panel of experts to guess the results. The weather re- lented enough to allow Mr. Butler, stormbound on Mull, to reach the mainland in time for the Cyprus conference in London, and in time to buy Mr. Randolph Churchill's version of his Cabinet colleagues' views of Rab. With Labour inching away in the Gallup race according to the Daily Telegraph, Parliament returned and declined to raise the BBC licence from its present £4. Price- fixing is to be abolished, and the Bribery Preven- tion League closed down for lack of interest. Mr. Wilson called for secret talks on secrets; TUC talks with Mr. Cecil King on the Daily Herald— soon to be The Sun—broke down, as did the Minister of Labour's attempt at mediation in the Welsh steel dispute, already three weeks and 17,000 jobs gone.
ON DECEMBER 10 the Duke of Edinburgh wished newly independent Zanzibar a 'happy, peaceful and prosperous' future. This week the people of Zanzibar decided to enjoy this without the ser- vices of the Sultan and of the Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed Hamadi. Eighty were killed in the subsequent rioting, and sixty lives were lost in religious clashes in India. US-Panamanian diplomatic relations were snapped following fighting after American students in the Canal Zone had flown the US flag. Ben Bella was re- ported none too secure after riots in Oran, but turned up to meet Arab leaders in Cairo never- theless. Dr. Nkhrumah slipped farther down the path to tyranny by arresting more Opposition leaders, and met Chou En-lai on an Afro-Asian tour. Dr. Castro flew hurriedly to Moscow, and Mr. Robert Kennedy will meet President Sukarno in Tokyo. In the US; PreSident Johnson replaced the New Deal by the Package Deal, promising the Good Life in everything from medicare to space shots. Ex-candidate Mr. Nixon commented that he was willing to make 'any sacrifice' for the Republican Party, even the supreme sacrifice of standing for President. Mr. Nehru was taken ill, and the customary processes were set in motion to produce a successor.
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MAKING THE BEST of a bad job, tobacco manufac- turers expressed no surprise at the US report which , found smoking 'a health hazard of sufficient importance to warrant remedial action,' and called for more research. Army recruiting figures showed a net gain in November of fifty- nine, leaving the Army just 9,000 below strength: the prison population also fell. Lord Devlin be- gan work as Press Council chairman, and Sir Julian Pode, steel magnate, insisted he would re- sign if Labour won the next election, while Mr. John Henderson, Glasgow Tory MP, was dis- owned by his constituency. Mr. Bevins, Post- master-General, announced a scheme for the Post Office to deliver unaddressed mail, and was Promptly sued by a Labour candidate who had no wish to receive unaddressed advertising matter.
'WILSON GETS CALL-UP' announced the Daily Ex- press, but this Wilson was a cricketer touring India for the MCC. Also in the sporting world, the rules of both rugby and boxing were changed. The Minister of War promised that no more badgers will be killed to provide ornamental heads for soldiers' sporrans, and a fifteenth-cen- tury egg was discovered in Leicester, apparently without a lion on it. TWTWTW (US edition) was panned by New York critics as 'thin and trite,' and Lawrence of Arabia was banned in Jordan as Arabs were presented in a comic way and Arab attitudes were made to look ridiculous.
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