Portrait of the Week— BY A 90-63 VOTE of the
Parliamentary Labour Party, the party whip was withdrawn from five Labour MPs—Michael Foot and Sydney Silver- man among them—for having voted against the Army Estimates, in defiance of a Parliamentary Party decision. Richard Crossman, chairman of the party, was one of seventy-eight signatories of a letter to Mr. Gaitskell asking that the whip be restored. Meanwhile, the party remained one short in the House of Commons, because of the ruling of the Committee of Privileges, in answer to Mr. Anthony Wedgwood-Benn's petition, that his succession to the viscountcy of Stansgate dis- qualified him from membership of the Commons.
AT GENEVA, the United States and Britain made a number of compromise proposals to the Soviet Union in the hopes of a ban on nuclear tests. In New York, the United States attacked the Soviet Union for trying to sabotage United Nations efforts in the Congo. In Washington there was a presidential conference on how to prevent the Communists taking over Laos. Spain landed parachute and other troops in the Spanish Sahara after having warned Morocco against 'any aggression: IT DID NOT ESCAPE attention that Dr. Verwoerd's first appearance in the South African Parliament since having taken the Union out of the Com- monwealth was on the first anniversary of that orgy of good neighbourliness, the Sharpeville massacre. Sir Roy Welensky returned to Salis- bury after having signed a statement with Mr. Macmillan that seemed to suggest the Macleod plan was still afloat. Yet again, in spite of South Africa's having left the Commonwealth, Britain abstained from a United Nations vote calling on the Union to change her racial policies in South West Africa : the resolution was adopted by 74 votes to none. Arrangements were made for talks in Evian between the French Government and representatives of the provi- sional government of the Algerian Republic— who, by French decree, are no longer to be
referred to as 'the rebels.' —
A LONG-AWAITED DECISION on the National Theatre was made when Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, Chancellor of the Exchequer, having heard the word 'culture,' reached for his axe. The Home Secretary refused to order a new inquiry into the case of Timothy John Evans, or to have his remains removed from Pentonville Prison. Trade union officials decided to call for a provincial bus strike, because of the refusal by employers to negotiate or go to arbitration on a wages claim. The Registrar-General's figures for 1959 showed an increase in illegitimate births in Eng- land and Wales; there was also a rise in the incidence in the United States. The Minister of Transport announced the appointment of a new chairman of the British Transport Commission, on loan from ICI, at £24,000 a year. It was announced that Princess Margaret and her hus- band were to have new quarters, in Kensington Palace. which would be done up at a cost of £70,000.
MR. CIICIL KING, chairman of the Daily Mirror group, which had bought it, said that the future of the Daily Herald was now assured, and that he wanted it to be 'the most quoted serious news- paper in Britain.' .Meanwhile, a Mr. Godfrey Winn earned a quote from us for the Daily Express, with the first sentence of his feature article: 'No one can have read the announce- ment of Clark Gable's widow being safely delivered of the child of their union without being made once again overwhelmingly con- scious of the irrefutable forces that control human destinies.' What, no one?
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