Portrait of the Week —
AFTER ER MUCH WRANGLING in conference, the Union of South Africa left the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth became a sweeter and a cleaner community. Dr. Verwoerd saw his decision as 'regrettable'; it was received in South Africa with 'shock and resentment.'
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LORD SALISBURY gave up his presidency of a num- ber of assorted Conservative constituency asso- ciations because am in such strong disagree- ment with its'--i.e. the Government's—'policy in a major issue.' His cousin, Lord Selborne, and the Chelsea Conservative Association lined them- selves up alongside; and Lord Hinchingbrooke, too, looked as though he was picking up his dress- ing from the right. Mr. Patrick Gordon-Walker, speaking for the Labour Party, said that it would defend the Government against the rebels in its ranks, without, apparently, a smile on his face or ever a sidelong look. At its annual conference. the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians, one of the smaller trade unions, voted for unilateral disarmament, and the executive council of the enormously bigger and more influential Transport and General Workers' Union prepared to do the same at its next con- ference, Thirteen officials of the Musicians' Union came out on strike against their executive committee, In France, the undertakers (who are council employees) led a parade down the Rue de Rivoli of civil and municipal servants who are striking for more pay or. it may be, for fewer funerals.
IN THE 110USE OF LORDS, the Lord Chancellor and a former Lord Chief Justice found themselves on opposite sides, and another peer found himself in the wrong lobby, when the House divided over Lord Mancroft's Rights of Privacy Bill (carried by 74 votes to 21) which ,would make it difficult for a reporter ever to interview anybody and easy for blackmailers and busybodies to bleed a news- paper. The gossip columnists worked themselves up into their usual lather of sloppy snobbery over the engagement of the Duke of Kent to a young woman—daughter of one baronet and grand- daughter of two others; sister of a Tory MP and sister-in-law of two peers' daughters—who was hailed in the democratic Daily Mirror as 'a York- shire lass.'
PRESIDENT KENNEDY outlined a programme of material help for Latin America, and it was expected that the British Government would set up a 'Department of Overseas Aid.' Britain's foreign trade figures for February showed a slight Improvement, but an East German £50 million order for a steel plant was lost because there was no tong-term credit backing from the British Government.
THREE GERMAN CLIMBERS, and one Austrian, made the first winter ascent of the nearly vertical north face of the Eiger. Mr. Ingemar Johansson was knocked out in the sixth round of the world's heavyweight championship fight by Mr. Floyd Patterson; earned something like a quarter of a million pounds by having been in the ring at all; and was told that he owed best part of it to the United States Government in back taxes. Burnley football team were knocked out of the European Cup, in the quarter-finals, by Hamburg Sport- vcrein. A new translation of the New Testament came out and, according to a boolkseller, 'left Lady Chatterley standing.' It was understood that he meant in sales figures. Senor Pablo Picasso (seventy-nine) married a lady with one eye on each side of her face.
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