PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
It packs quite a punch! Lady Thatcher, a former prime minis- ter, said in a speech that the Conservative Party's 'difficulties are due to the fact that, in limited but important respects, our poli- cies and performance have not lived up to our analysis and principles'. She went on: 'I am not sure what is meant by those who say that the Party should return to something called One Nation Conservatism. As far as I can tell by their views on European feder- alism, such people's creed would better be described as No Nation Conservatism.' The Government tried to play down her criti- cisms, but, in a personal letter to the Times, Mr Alistair Burt, a Social Security Minister, contradicted her opinion that the Tories had let down 'all those who aspire to join the middle classes'; he knew many Conser- vatives who were not middle class. He was reprimanded by Party Whips for writing the letter. Mr Tony Blair, the leader of the Opposition, persevered with his idea of a `stakeholder' society, though he said it was really just a slogan. Mr Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers, is to resign from the Labour Party and set up the Socialist Labour Party from 1 May. The Prison Service is to review the policy imposed on it last year of shack- ling to prison officers on long chains women in labour or those who have just given birth. This followed an apology to the Commons from Miss Ann Widdecombe, a Home Office Minister, for inadvertently misleading the House in saying that there had been no objection to the practice from the hospital to which prisoners from Hol- loway had been taken. Dr Nicholas Tate, the Government's chief curriculum adviser, said that children should be taught the dif- ference between right and wrong at school; ten commandments for a code of behaviour at school could be: honesty, respect for oth- ers, politeness, a sense of fair play, forgive- ness, punctuality, non-violent behaviour, patience, faithfulness and self-discipline. A campaign called Rock the Vote is to spend £1 million in trying to persuade 5.2 million 18-24-year-olds to vote in the next election; it is thought that only about 40 per cent of the group of that age voted in the last elec- tion. 'Dicky' Bird is to retire from Test umpiring in the summer.
RUSSIAN troops moved in on the village of Pervomayskoye on the border of Chech- nya and Dagestan, where Chechen sepa- ratists had been holding more than 100 hostages. This followed their withdrawal, with Russian help, from a hospital in Dagestan where they had at first taken 3,000 hostages, 23 of whom were killed. After a week Russian artillery and heli- copter gunships with rockets bombarded the village, and then ground forces began house-to-house fighting. Chechen activists captured a Russian ship carrying 250 peo- ple in the Black Sea and took hostage 30 Russian power workers in Grozny. Presi- dent Bill Clinton of the United States said that he and his wife, Hillary, were close to bankruptcy after having to meet lawyers' fees to defend themselves in legal cases involving sexual impropriety and property speculation. Mr Lamberto Dini resigned as prime minister of Italy, but remained in office as a caretaker; Mr Andreas Papan- dreou, who is still in hospital, resigned as prime minister of Greece, and his Panhel- lenist Socialist Party (Pasok) set about seeking a replacement. Portugal elected a socialist president to go with its socialist prime minister for the first time since 1974. The Israeli High Court authorised the use of force in the interrogation of a Palestini- an prisoner. Bethlehem was sealed off after violence. An exchange of prisoners between Bosnia and Serbia was postponed when Bosnia sought knowledge of what had become of thousands of missing prisoners; unconfirmed claims said that 8,000 had been buried in an iron ore mine. The Unit- ed States is to mediate between Croats and Bosnians over the disputed territory of Mostar. Voodoo was adopted as the official
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