PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`Our executive is willing to give you one last chance.'
Mr Tony Benn announced that he was standing as the Left's candidate against Neil Kinnock for the Labour leadership. Eric Hafer joined him as the challenge to Roy Hattersley. Twenty-one Conservative MPs, in an amendment to the Govern- ment's poll tax legislation, proposed a three-tier scale to accommodate poorer citizens. The Government rejected the proposal saying it amounted to a tax on income. The recent violence in Ulster prodded Whitehall and Dublin into streng- thening the Anglo-Irish agreement. The RUC, under powers granted by the Pre- vention of Terrorism Act and other emergency legislation, seized from the BBC and ITN untransmitted film of the incident. Almost 4,000 Jaguar workers voted to strike over management plans for increased productivity. The five-week-old Land Rover strike ended after a postal ballot showed 79 per cent acceptance of the management's pay offer. Figures for re- ported crime in England and Wales in 1987 showed the smallest rise for 30 years, though violent crimes against the person were up 12 per cent on 1986 and sexual offences up 11 per cent. The Abbey National Building Society announced plans for a stock market launch. With an esti- mated flotation value of around £2.5 bil- lion this would be the largest ever of a private company in Britain.
PRESIDENT Reagan publicly affirmed his faith in the heroic stature. and innocence of wrongdoing of Colonel Oliver North, cur- rently under indictment over the Iran- Contra affair. US Justice Department offi- cials said the remarks could prejudice a fair trial. In the American Presidential race the Revd Jesse Jackson won overwhel- mingly in the Michigan Democratic cau- cuses. He and Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts now have virtually equal numbers of delegates pledged them. In the French Presidential race opinion polls gave President Mitterrand comfortable leads over his main rivals, the current prime minister Jacques Chirac and the former one Raymond Barre. Mr Joe Bossano's Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party won elec- tions to the colony's House of Assembly. Herr Stoltenberg, the West German fi- nance minister, issued a strong call for Britain to join the European Monetary System, making pointed reference to the British Government's internal divisions over the subject. In Nicaragua the Sandi- nistas and Contras established a ceasefire. Moscow sent troops into Yerevan, the Soviet Armenian capital, where strikes were reported; strikes by Armenians were also reported in neighbouring Azerbaijan. In addition unrest was reported in the Baltic republics annexed by the USSR in 1940. A first instalment of George Orwell's Animal Farm was published in a Latvian journal, the first appearance of the book on Soviet territory. Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who betrayed secrets to a British newspaper, was jailed by an Israeli court for 18 years. For the first time ever the new head of Israel's home- field secret service was announced: Yossef Hermaling. The Knesset legalised homosexuality. Geoffrey Dickinson, the Punch cartoonist, died aged 55. CGM
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