Portrait of the week
The Social Democratic Party, meeting in Salford, decided that, at least for the time being, a merger with the Liberals was undesirable. Dr David Owen, the party's leader, said that the Alliance could not stand still, and then upset many Liberals by making plain his support for a free market economy and for cruise missiles. Mr Roy Hattersley thought it inconceivable that a Kinnock-Meacher partnership could result from the elections to the Labour Party leadership next month. Mr Michael Meacher agreed with Mr Hattersley that Labour had a moral duty to win the next election, but said this could only be achiev- ed without Mr Hattersley's participation. In the Trotskyist paper Newsline Mr Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, branded the Polish trade union Solidarity as anti- socialist, trying to overthrow a socialist state. The outcry from his own union, among others, was such that Mr Scargill went to a coal mine in Nottinghamshire to tell the miners, many of them born in Poland, that, of course, Solidarity was an anti-socialist organisation which he sup- ported. Later he met the new Coal Board chairman, Mr Ian MacGregor, for the first time. After years of strikes and overmann- ing, the Mersey Docks declared a trading profit for the first time in five years; and engineering workers demanded a 7 per cent pay rise and a 35-hour working week. The' IRA's 'chief of staff' in Northern Ireland, Ivor Bell, and several others, were arrested on the evidence of informers within the organisation. Criticism of the Royal Ulster Constabulary's use of 'supergrasses' to con- vict terrorists led Mr Prior, the Northern Ireland Secretary, publicly to endorse the practice.
In Lebanon, the Druze militia, supported by Shia forces and by Syria, appeared to be on the point of taking control of Beirut from the Lebanese army. The government refused to take part in any cease-fire talks at which Syria was represented. The US battleship New Jersey was alerted and a fur- ther 2,500 Marines arrived off the coast of Lebanon. President Reagan decided that America should take a more active role in the war, by authorising the peacekeeping Marines already in Beirut to call on the US aircraft carrier Eisenhower to take retaliatory action, if necessary, against the Druze. Russia accused the US of aggres- sion. The British Embassy advised its citizens to leave Lebanon, Mr Richard Luce, minister at the Foreign Office, paid a visit to President Gemayel, and two RAF Buccaneers, based in Cyprus, flew over Beirut to give encouragement to the govern- ment and to the 97 members of the British unit of the international peacekeeping
force. In Athens, an EEC statement CO
demning Russia for shooting down Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 in Soviet air space was vetoed by Greece, and a sirrlita,r resolution of the UN Security Council via' vetoed by Russia (China, Zimbabwe, ' Guyana and Nicaragua abstaining). Brite21 banned all Aeroflot flights for 14 days, ail" British Airways suspended its flights tpe Russia for 60 days, causing some ine011,v„. nience to tourists now in the Soviet Oat' Russia continued to assert that the 1(01,e8.," civil airliner was on an intelligence miasit and refused to pay any compensation to lric;
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passengers' families; America continue t say that the Russian account of the incidell was totally unacceptable; and Mr Reaeer proclaimed a national day of mourning ° the victims of the 'massacre'. Bodies sonal effects and parts of the aeroOlan, were found off the northern coast of 14% kaido Island. In Ireland, a referendarn make abortion illegal under the constitutim" was carried by a majority of two to ollei
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(with 54 per cent voting), and the pope SP four days in Austria. Mr Mugabe, Plr Minister of Zimbabwe, on a visit to Day'r: defended the rearrest of the airforce °' ficers acquitted of treason in Harare bY saY' ing that he had applied the common laW the law of detention. Two of the officer; were released and flew to London, ancli fn Mugabe went on to the US, staying °Id Georgia with his, and David Owen 's' friend Andrew Young. Air attacks oe Managua and two ports in Nicaragua tre made from Honduras, and in Chile u;s tenth anniversary of General Pinodlet „
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rule was marked by the deaths of te" demonstrators at the hands of the police' elton House, Lincolnshire, was
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Bby Lord Brownlow to the Nat,-,d Trust. Michael Telling, a cousin of Vestey, was charged with the murder of hke American wife, somewhere and at 01, time between March and September: hes't head was found at their house in Wed Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and the rest:J:1 her body in a coniferous wood on the euar of Haldon racecourse in Devon. Otb„e Devon news: two new headmasters were aFe pointed to Dartington Hall, th„ 'progressive' school, after Mr Blacksh3re had resigned from the post following the disclosure by the Sun that a pornograPln' magazine had published photographs slOwi: ing him and his wife, BustyI3eth 'celebrating their marriage'. And t to Chancellor of the Exchequer hope Mrs receive f380,000 from the estate of 1';e Phyllis Grey of Brixham, who died intes,tte and apparently without any relatives. I" will of Dr Bodkin Adams contained be quests to 20 women.
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