The Week
-r,he Queen celebrated her fiftieth birthday in toe absence of the prime minister. She 'fully understood' the inability to attend her dance at Windsor of Mr Callaghan, who is a teetotaller. The Queen's guests did however include Princess Margaret and Lord flowdon, Mr Harold Wilson—who had oroken a holiday to attend—and Mr Edward Heath, also returning from a 11°IidaY in Spain where he had drunk 'uerrY, attacked Mr Michael Foot and been voted Tourist of the Year. „ To mark the birthday the Queen's /Awards for Export Achievement and Techh°10gical Achievement were announced. Arnong the recipients was BP, apparently for its technological achievements in the North Sea rather than for its recent export achievements in Italy. Unconnected—dircetlY at least—with public events in Italy, the heads of the Scala opera, Da Grassi and Claudio A bbado, resigned.
Mr Jack Jones demanded a thirty-five
11°ur week and attacked the House of 11...ords and 'such fripperies as Ascot and the :ice'. He persuaded the Scottish TUC to :oport the government. Mr John Stone se became became the English National Party's first mp and appeared at 'a rally with the floarty's chairman, though not, like him, in ha.ileY dress. Mr Edward Short announced imPending retirement to universal inQifference and it was rumoured yet again at Sir Christopher Soames would be returning to Parliament. f As England enjoyed the warmest Easter ,thany years the cricket season began. b erpYshire hired Barlow, the South African atsman, at £10,000 a season. The warm fweather did not prevent a Miss Soraya rril?rn setting a new belly-dancing record of i 1/1Y-one hours non-stop. The IRA killed et Prison warder in Ulster. The government 0.nsidered returning the privileges recently Withdrawn from republican prisoners. The warders were asked, at the same time, if 'fleY.vvished to carry arms. 1.,uV1°Ience continued in the Levant, in wrusaiem where the Israeli government inas faced with intensified Arab rioting, and fir the Lebanon where yet another 'ceaseIre' Proved hollow, and where Syrian r,_°°13s once more moved in. In Rhodesia, began serious attacks, blowing up railway line to South Africa and ung three South African tourists. Dr s'-hast re complained about Cuban émigrés °Tclhting his fishing boats. PUbl'e Tories proposed rigorous control on 00 le expenditure when they returned to er, including a cabinet post for the 41" Secretary to the Treasury. In the go ntine annual inflation reached 566 per cent. The Harris Tweed weavers voted against a plan to increase the size of their looms by mechanisation. Two hundred pounds of explosive were found by the police in a north London suburb.
A headmaster in Oswestry lectured the parents of pupils at his school in the benefits of family planning; the government of Uttar Pradesh in India proposed to make sterilisation compulsory for families of more than three, with a three-year jail sentence for transgressors. The Indian High Commission in London warned that British visitors to India would soon need visas.
In Melbourne a non-political gang armed with machine-guns liberated £1 million from bookmakers. The manager said, 'Some of the older members thought it was part of a TV show.' The ten thousandth ship passed through the Suez Canal since its re-opening. A Soviet farmworker took his tractor and rammed a shop which had refused to sell him vodka. Portugal prepared for its general election, with the Communists running last in the opinion polls. A third of the Japanese were stranded by a national railway strike. Some hundred commuters were stranded by grass fires breaking out by the railway in Kent.
The new edition of Debrett discovered that members of the titled classes Were leaving London, 'but few,' the editor thankfully reported, 'to the outer suburbs'.
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