Portrait of the week
The first of the American nuclear cruise missiles arrived at Greenham Common air base 24 hours earlier than expected by the women protesters camped outside the gates. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine strenuously denied in the Commons that their arrival had caught him by surprise too, and he again set his face against any dual key arrangement to give Britain physical control over the firing of the missiles despite an opinion poll indicating that this is the course favoured by 94 per cent of the public. CND responded to the arrival of the first of 160 missiles by threatening a massive campaign of civil disobedience to prevent their deployment on mobile launchers outside the confines of the Greenham base. Monsignor Bruce Kent, leader of CND, received a standing ovation from the annual congress of the British Communist Party when he praised the Party as partners of CND in the cause of peace: his remarks were said to have displeased Cardinal Hume. The annual Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph was led by the Prince of Wales, in the absence of the Queen who is on tour in Africa and India: CND badges were in evidence for the first time at the ceremony, worn by a group of ex-servicemen. In a TV interview with David Frost, Prince Andrew described coming under fire during the Falklands War as 'character-forming', admitted to feelings of loneliness and described his life as naval officer and Royal prince as 'schizophrenic'. Eric Varley, former Secretary for Industry and 'shadow' spokesman on Employment, decided to quit politics to become deputy chairman of Coalite, the parent firm of the much-criticised Falkland Islands Company: Anthony Wedgwood Benn is one of the front-runners for Mr Varley's Chesterfield seat, where Labour had a majority of 7,763 at the last election. A by-election is expected in March. The actor John le Mesurier died — or 'conked out' in the words of his death notice in the Times aged 71.
Tn one of its periodic fits of morality, the 1 Commons began pushing through a Private Members' measure with all Party support to ban video `nasties' after a private viewing of such films had upset even the most hardened MPs; there were suggestions that the Bill, sponsored by Tory Graham Bright, might be widened to include pornographic tapes already legally on sale to customers over the age of 18. The Post Office Engineering Union agreed to comply with a court order, made under the new industrial relations laws introduced by Norman Tebbit, to cease its action against Mercury, the private-enterprise communi- cations network, as part of the union's campaign against the government's privatisation policy. Angered by a series of strikes, printing tycoon Robert Maxwell closed down his Park Royal printing works in West London, sacking 400 members of Sogat 82, the print union: he was doused with oil when he supervised the dismantling of machinery at the plant. The Appeal Court quashed a £20,000 libel verdict in favour of former Welsh rugby full-back J.P.R. Williams against the Daily Telegraph, which had alleged that Williams infringed his amateur status by accepting payment for his autobiography. The Attorney General decided against prosecuting a number of newspapers for contempt for printing background stories on the mass murderer Denis Nilsen before the trial jury had recorded its verdict. Police enquiries were ordered after a Civil Servant in the Department of Education posted a confidential document to the Guardian in an official envelope without enough stamps on it: the paper returned it to the sender unopened.
Abroad, Turkish Cypriots unilaterally declared the independence of their section of the island as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Freddie Heineken, 60, the chairman of the brewery bearing his name, was kidnapped for a rumoured £6 million ransom. In Lebanon the collapse of a ceasefire increased the pressure on PLO leader Yasser Arafat, besieged in Tripoli by dissident forces of his own movement. A meeting between Lebanon's President Gemayel and President Assad of Syria was postponed when Assad underwent an emergency operation for appendicitis. In Central America, the Foreign Minister of Costa Rica resigned in protest against the dispatch of 1,000 US army engineers to the country, which borders Nicaragua. Seventy Iraqi soldiers were shot for desertion in the face of the Iranian enemy, while a Chinese naval pilot flew an antiquated Mig.17 jet to Taiwan, earning £1 million in gold for his desertion. Undertakers in Queensland, Australia, want to introduce cardboard coffins to meet the demand for more
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