—Portrait of the Week— IT WAS, AS THEY SAY, a
not uneventful week at home and abroad. The Union of Post Office Workers, claiming an immediate pay increase of
10s. against the 9s. 5d. offered them by Mr. Bevins, announced a one-day strike. An bvertime ban is also promised. The postal services were in a state of chaos not experienced since the general strike of 1926. Everyone, everywhere, waited for that letter from you.
MR. KENYATTA was attacked in a London street as the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' con- ference was ending. Earlier, plans had been announced for greater educational, financial, medical and technical aid and co-operation between the Commonwealth countries, with the UK bravely shouldering the cornucopia. Post hoc, propter hoc? Meanwhile Manx Radio angrily protested to the Postmaster-General that Radio Caroline was pre-empting its advertising rncome, and twenty miles out from the Mersey in Liverpool Bay the mass media skull and cross- bones was raised once again by Radio Red Rose (which broadcast for ninety minutes). In the House of Lords the Primate denied a Vestments Plot; in the Commons a new issue against the Egg Board was described; and in Monday's debate between the Mods and Goths over the future of the Palace of Westminster Mr. Selwyn Lloyd Was again accused of being the inspiration of the Goths. Britain, it was announced, is to carry out an underground nuclear test in Nevada.
AFTER A MEETING in Geneva of international Intercommunication experts it was announced that one day it will be possible for a subscriber anywhere in the world to direct-dial any other subscriber. No number will exceed twelve digits and from Kalamazoo to Timbuktu anyone who wishes will be able to speak to the Spectator at 44-1-287-3221. The former Secretary-General Of the French Communist Party died on a Soviet liner in the Black Sea. In Munich Dr. Erhard trounced his Adenauer-linc critics, led by Herr Strauss, and Mr. Wang Kuo-chuan, the new Chinese Ambassador in Poland, arrived in yVarsaw to carry on the Sino-American talks, now m their tenth year. It was also announced that a treasure trove of President Harding's love letters to a Marion, Ohio, matron had been found: some, thirty-five to forty pages long, had been written on notepaper of the US Senate.
THE BEATLES were never once out of the news. When they returned to Liverpool they were met by 100,000 fans. There were 400 casualties. The ,Times correspondent reported that High Street was like a battlefield casualty clearing station.' To no one's surprise it was announced that Dr. A. J. P. Taylor was to write the official biography of Lord Beaverbrook; Covent Garden Market is to be moved to the South Bank at Vauxhall Bridge, and British bluejackets on the first ex- Perimental destroyer of the MLF, the USS Biddle, were disgusted to find that there will be no rum ration: they will, however, draw USN rates of pay. In Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Mr. W. F. Wright is regularly receiving USSR-TV, and the durable Mr. Mikoyan was made President of the Soviet Union.
nut ABOVE ALL, it was Goldwater week. At San Francisco he was acclaimed by the party of Jefferson and Lincoln. At least for a few months, things would never be the same again. And as if to emphasise that whatever the Grand Old Party decided, hands across the sea still held, on Sunday Major-General Marcus Hinton,. Secretary of the Confederate High Command British Regiment, d.e.posited a wreath in the Channel to mark the sinking of the Alabama.
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