PORTRAIT OF A WEEK
Frontal attacks
MICHAEL WYNN JONES
Some curious bedfellows have turned up on the new International Committee on the Uni- versity Emergency, announced in New York on Friday. With money from the Rockefeller Foundation, 103 academic troubleshooters (ranging from Saul Bellow to Milton Fried- man by way of Robert McKenzie) have set themselves up to stiffen the soft centre of 'university freedom' against assaults from extreme left or right pressures. The way things are, it looks as if their first confronta- tion could be right here in Britain. At the -z University of East Anglia the Earl of Cran- brook and assorted MPS resigned from the Council after the university opened an alternative bank account so that 322 protest- ing students need not compromise their principles by dealing with Barclays Bank
with its South African subsidiaries). 'I don't think learning can flourish in an institution that gives way to political pressure' explained, th'earl. Which sentiments were obviously shared by Professor Cox when he collected
50 signatures on a letter to the Times dvocating a legally binding code of student eiscipline and the outlawing of sit-ins. Un- Pf.ntunately for him the letter was pre- maturely revealed to the National Union of Students' conference at Margate and roused the delegates to fighting pitch. But even their militant ardour had to be dampened for half an hour while police evacuated the Winter 4.1.1ardens to search for a non-existent bomb.
M sterious . attacks on the mainland of Guinea on Sunday and Monday caused journalists, diplomats and the ur no end of confusion. President Sekou Toure claimed they were by mercenaries from Senegal and Mali, financed by the Portuguese at £15.000 a man. The governor of Portuguese Guinea denied all knowledge- of the invasion, and suspected that Sekou Toure was on the losing end of a tribal war. Russia, neverthe- less, warned Portugal to keep her hands off, Nigeria put her army at his disposal and the UN rushed observers to the spot. But it tran- spires that the whole affair may have been greatly over-dramatised. Most of the shops in Conakry (which allegedly bore the brunt of the fighting) didn't even put their shutters up during the 'invasion'.
The heavyweights took the stand this week in the case of Solicitors v the Bar. For the prosecution Lord Goodman once again chal- lenged barristers' traditional monopoly on appointnients to the Bench. Lord Hailsham (for the defence), despite the critical shortage of suitable candidates, has rejected the Royal Commission's recommendation that solicitors should be made eligible and continues gingerly to steer the largest piece of legal reform for 97 years through the Lords. Up in Nottingham, meanwhile. Mr Justice K liner Brown had to come to his own de- fence. After permitting cannabis to be burnt in court for the benefit of the jury, the good judge came up with the legal distinction of the week: 'One thing the jury did not do was inhale cannabis fumes' he said, 'they smelt the smell of burning smoke'. Now who but an ex-barrister could come up with that one?
Mr Khrushchev's memoirs, published this week in the Times, came under a further cloud of suspicion. Russian experts in America claimed it was the product of a Western European centre for Soviet for- geries. Svetlana Stalin insisted from her per- sonal knowledge that Khrushchev's memory was 'confused and false'. It seems that Stalin did not drag her by the hair on to the dance- floor at a drunken New Year's Eve party in 1952, after all. She was in the cinema at the time. The Times, naturally convinced of the authenticity of the document, intimated that it was in the interests of certain high-up KGB, officers to have allowed the book out of Russia. The author himself (if it was Mr Khrushchev) was regrettably unaware of the cloak-and-dagger proceedings surrounding his revelations, having had a heart attack.
By the beginning of this week more than 12 million chickens—which might otherwise have survived till Christmas—were affected by the epidemic of fowl-pest. In spite of the cynicism of the Ministry of Agriculture, the director of Chelmsford Public Health labora- tory reported that housewives handling in- fected birds (even deep-frozen) ran the risk of mild infection. A senior health inspector emphasised the inadequacy of London's health department with gruesome stories of a Chinese restaurant 'alive with rate and a Rentokil executive told how empty bUildings could be invaded by Rattus Rattus (the black rat) climbing drainpipes and scuttling across telephone wires. 'By the time the top floor of a block is finished the rats are already sitting up there waiting for the people to move in'. Not quite so nimble, though, is Morag the monster of Loch Morar reported on Tuesday by the London University team 'surveying Britain's deepest lake. It has one or more humps, is black, grey or greeny brown, and looks like an upturned boat about the size of a full-grown Indian elephant, apparently.
No sooner had we done with the exploits of the Russian moonbug (it has gone into hiber- nation during the two-week lunar night) than the Americans announced they had dis- covered how to turn one hundredweight of moon dust into a gallon of water. Nor have our own scientists been unproductive. The University of Aston have discovered a pro- cess whereby plastic containers can disinte- grate in sunlight. The prospect, for a world being buried in its own litter, is enchanting, but can they discover how to find the sun- light to disintegrate the plastic containers?
Momentary panic for Poseidon shareholders, when the Australian Stock Exchange sus- pended dealings in the company's shares for four hours, and disappointment for those British MPS who were hoping for a pay rise, when Mr Whitelaw sternly ordered them to show restraint themselves while urging it on everyone else. Quite unmoved by such virtue 115,000 power station workers threatened Christmas chaos if their pay offer were not improved by 7 December.
Quite apart from the 125 mph Reliant Scimitar GTE she was given on Thursday as a birthday present, I'll bet Princess Anne is mightily relieved she reached twenty before Gordonstoun, more or less the family's alma mater, decided to go co-ed. On Monday the governors of Prince Philip's and Prince Charles' rugged old school announced their intention of admitting 30 girls by 1972, mountain-rescue, life-saving and all, Anyone for .a cold shower, girls?
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