- Portrait of the Week— IN AFRICA the sky grows
darker yet, and the wind rises higher. A state of emergency was declared in many districts in the Union, and like a declara- tion of war, this created the situation it described. The declaration was followed by arrests, on the One hand, and riots and marches on the other. Outlook : thundery. Eye-witness reports of the Sharpeville massacre which are filtering back sug- gest that almost everything said by Dr. Verwoerd since the killings has been what the Times would Call 'things he knows are not true.' Meanwhile, in East Africa Mr. Macleod ran into stormy weather from both white and black demonstrators, the rumble of the approaching storm grew louder in Nyasaland, the Belgian Congo neared indepen- dence, the Monckton Commission plodded round
Cent ral
IN SOUTH AFRICA the Government introduced a 8,111 to ban both the (moderate) African National Congress and the (more extreme) Pan-Africanist Congress. The 'Opposition' United Party an- nounced its support for the Bill, and a speaker from m the Progressive Party, opposing it was called a white Kaffir' by a Nationalist, who was ordered to withdraw by the Speaker. Widespread arrests of those opposed to collective insanity followed, as did an increase in the burning of passes and of sporadic violence. The Security Council prepared to debate the subject, and the British Government appeared to be preparing to go so far as to abstain in any United Nations vote on the issue.
*
MR. MACMILLAN flew to Washington in a high state of urgency, with the State Department making it clear that he had been invited at his own request. His talks with President Eisenhower resulted in a cautious approach to acceptance of the latest Soviet offer of a moratorium on 'small' nuclear tests. Breath was bated in Geneva. where the dele- gations to the conference on the limitation of nuclear tests awaited precise instructions. In the same city, the Law of the Sea Conference looked like resulting in a virtually complete climb-down by Britain. In place of the rigid insistence on a fishing-rights limit of three miles, Mr. Hare announced Britain's willingness to accept a terri- torial-waters limit of six miles, with a further so( miles of severely restricted fishing by countries ether than the owner of the territorial waters. It Was by no means certain that the conference Would accept even that.
MR. KHRUSHCHEV'S visit to France continued, though for a series of highly complicated reasons he was unable to meet Canon Kir. Connoisseurs °C Khrushchevisms were disappointed, too, by the absence of references to whistling shrimps or horses with large heads. But the visit did not appear to have shaken Charles XIV from his alliance with Dr. Adenauer.
41 LEAST NINETEEN firemen and salvagemen died in
°Ile of the worst peace-time fires in Britain's
history, when a Glasgow whisky-warehouse Parried and exploded. Firemen, awarded a pay increase in the same week, voted to send their first week's extra wages to a fund for the depen- dantS of the dead. The less spectacular massacre on the roads continued, and Mr. Marples declared himself horrified at the latest figures-881 killed • in a month. His old department, the Post Office, announced that it was going to reorganise itself on a fully businesslike basis, and rumour grew Stronger that the first result of the reorganisation was going to be the doubling of telegram charges.
Africa through the African boycott, and the Algerian wound bled on. All was quiet in Liberia.
Previous page
