PORTRAIT OF A WEEK
Death & disaster
MICHAEL WYNN JONES
It will be a long time before the final death toll in East Pakistan, after the cyclone and tidal waves, is reckoned. This tragic dis- aster has devastated 10,000 square miles, killed at least 45,000 people and made 1,000.000 more homeless. Eyewitness reports tell of 'survivors wandering around like mad people, crying out names of their dead ones' and mass graves of up to 5,000 bodies. On the other side of the world just one simple grave in a small French village became the Mecca for 50,000 mourners. General de Gaulle's last rites were conducted strictly in accordance with his wishes ('no national funeral . . . no ministers, no assembly com- mittees, no public authorities') dictated by him in a letter in 1952. This macabre docu- ment, though presumably necessary, for a man of his stature, was published by the Herald Tribune. Any government thinking of doing the General further honour would do well to note its last paragraph: 'I state my refusal in advance of any distinction, promotion. dignity, citation, decoration, whether it be French or foreign. If any whatsoever was conferred upon me, it would be in violation of my last wishes.'.
It was a relief to hear from the Czech Minis- try of Culture that the amnestied Czech writers would not be required to 'perform acts of self-flagellation', but depressing to realise that elsewhere behind the Iron Cur- tain liberal attitudes to the arts are still as remote as ever. In Russia the trial of Andrei Amalrik, author of the banned Will the Soviet Union survive until 1984, took place away from prying Western eyes in the for- bidden city of Sverdlovsk. For 'the dissem- ination of falsehoods' Amalrik faces three years restrictive regime in Siberia. But Rus- sian writers are not entirely without honour in their own land: on Thursday cellist Mstislav Rostropovich published an open letter protesting the Soviet press campaign against Nobel prize-winner Solzhenitsyn with a real sting in the tail. 'Explain to me please,' he wrote, 'why just in our literature and art
so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word?' Following his example three Soviet scientists, including the father of the Russian H-bomb, formed a civil rights group and distributed their mani- festo to Western correspondents.
Would I be alone in thinking that drugs made a bit of a comeback this week? First there was Mr William Deedes telling a Standing Committee that 'what appears to be a vindictive campaign by the police against young people is in reality in the interests of their own safety', and seemingly being vindicated by the news that four boys from Brentwood School had been expelled after a convent girl fell out of a window at the school during an LSD trip at a Hallowe'en dance. Then there was Marianne Faithfull discovered semi-conscious in an hotel room 'apparently suffering from a drug overdose'. In Germany stiffer penalties for trafficking in narcotics were announced after addiction had reached 'alarming proportions'. In Britain (more advanced in these matters) a humaner method of curing addiction was reported from St Bernard's Hospital. Southall. A café proprietor from Manchester claimed to have sold heroin to one–of the Rolling Stones. A leading psychiatrist pronounced that drug-takers were searching for a Christianity-substitute, while the Dean of Perth, the Very Rev John Hazlewood, said he would rather go to a pot-smoking party than to a cocktail party. He had found the former to have 'a far more pleasant atmosphere' (as one could well imagine in Australia).
Busy week for the Church, what with the Catholic authorities condemning outright a new sex book from the Humanists which advises parents to lend youngsters their bed- room to make love in. and the Christian Council of Rhodesia making a united stand against the regime's policies. The Archbishop of Canterbury bravely set off for South Africa after openly opposing the sale of arms to that country and endorsing the World Council of Churches' donation to guerrilla movements. He therefore missed the Rev Ronald Stephens's commercial for marga- rine. But here for the benefit of the Arch- bishop is the text: 'The body needs fat like the sould needs God'.
By recommending that the miners should go back to work and accept the Coal Board's offer of up to £3 a week, union leaders appeared to be taking their lives into their hands. An ugly mob surrounded union headquarters in London, jostling, punching and kicking in the groin any compromiser who dared show his face. At Vauxhall, the problem was passivity. In protest at the impending redundancy of 325 workers, two thousand draughtsmen engaged in a Day of Cleanliness, straightening bent paper-clips and forming massive queues for the loo, and a Day of Thought, eyes glued to the firm's rule book. There was a few moments pause over at Rolls-Royce, where even the losses are aristocratic. After bringing in the Government to bail the company out with £42 million, the chairman, Sir Denning Pearson, lost his job to the reliable Lord Cole, and must have stolen a wistful glance or two over at to where the new chairman, Jack Callard, was announced at £58,000 p.a.
Scientists were notably tepid about Professor James Danielli's claim to have created living cells from component parts of existing ones and to have opened up the possibility of `an egg cell capable of living on Mars'. Much more enthusiasm greeted the Russian's suc- cess in landing a robot on the moon, to grope for dust in the Sea of Rains (which would have been a more fitting title for large areas of Britain this sodden week).
While the police were hauling in Britain's Most Wanted Man—gunman John McVicar who had been on the run since 1968—the Home Secretary was sending Britain's Most Unwanted Man packing. Fresh from his fracas on the Frost programme Yippie leader, Jerry Rubin proceeded to Belfast where he was taken, like any visiting leader or politician, on a tour of the city's slums and tenements, and announced his solidarity with the IRA (for reasons best known to himself). From a safe distance, he went on to call Mr Maudling the British Butcher, told him to go to hell, and informed him that he had no intention of leaving British soil. Six Special Branch men thought otherwise, however, and Rubin and his sidekick 'volun- teered' to leave. Which was probably just as well for him:
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