— Portrait of the Week— THERE WAS NAUGHT for anyone's comfort
from Berlin, as the wall rose higher. A much- strengthened barrier was erected at great speed round the Eastern sector of the city, incorporating anti-tank barriers and double thicknesses of con- crete; the British Foreign Office said that their objections to the walling-in of the East Berliners, expressed in August, still stood. So did the wall.
THE GOVERNMENT'S IMMIGRATION BILL lurched un- steadily into the House of Commons, falling about in unseemly attitudes as it did so. The Opposition, having united, to everybody's surprise, against it, attacked it vigorously, as did many of the Govern- ment's own supporters; the former on the grounds that it was a racialist measure, the latter because it was proposed hastily to drop the hastily-in- cluded clause which would have made the Irish subject to the same controls as Commonwealth citizens. It was hastily proposed that the Irish should be brought back into the Bill's scope, and the Bill was hastily taken away for this to be done. Since it was already clear that there was no way of doing it, it was expected that the Bill would be hastily amended, or possibly not.
*
MATTERS IN THE CONGO having long since gone from worst possible to worst conceivable, it was difficult to determine precisely what they had gone to now. The mutinous troops of the (more or less official) Congolese Army, who had earlier mas- sacred thirteen Italian airmen, were being sought by the United Nations forces, but it was not clear what the United Nations forces would, or could, do if it found them. The. Security Council con- tinued to discuss the problem, but could come to no firm conclusions about it.
*
IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, the late President Trujillo's brothers attempted a coup, which failed, the United States Navy having stood by lust outside Dominican territorial waters just in case. The late President's son remained where he was, but the wicket uncles left the country. Other international trouble arose, or was threatened, in New Delhi, where the Russian Orthodox Church was admitted into the World Council of Churches, In Ghana, where the Royal visit came to an end along with the close season for Dr. Nkrumah's Political opponents, in Finland, where Russian diplomatic pressure was intensified, in Kenya, where famine threatened many thousands of Africans, and in Paris, where the Prix Goncourt was awarded and the usual riots consequently expected.
*
AT HOME, the pay pause seemed to have had a kind of seizure, when first the striking loaders at Lon- don Airport were awarded more than they asked for and second the electricity workers were given an award dating from a point three months earlier than the official 'end of the pause on April 1. There was much excitement in the House of Commons when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was questioned on the subject, and the Prime Minister had to come to the Chancellor's rescue.
THE COMMITTEE OF 100 announced that it had plans for mass sit-down demonstrations at various military installations. and urged demonstrators not to give their names and addresses when arrested, thus compelling the authorities to hold them in prison. Meanwhile, two members of the less militant Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, disturbed by the rift between the two bodies, sat down in Earl Russell's hallway, and willingly gave their names when the police were sent for to eject them.
Previous page
