Portrait of the week
Unemployment in Britain topped three million for the first time since 1933, to wails of shock, horror and anguish from all the British press. Mr Haig and Mr Gromyko met for seven hours in Geneva with Mr Gromyko apparently refusing to discuss Poland and Mr Haig refusing to discuss disarmament. In Poland, General Janizelski made noncommittal noises about relaxing some of the constraints of military rule. France followed West Germany in signing a contract to buy vast quantities of Siberian gas from the Soviet Union on the same day that EEC ministers met in Brussels to discuss trade sanctions against Russia. Russia suppressed figures for her 1981 grain harvest, thought to be disastrously low, but President Reagan gave no indication of reimposing a grain em- bargo. West German bankers indicated that they would grant the USSR credits for the building of a Siberian gas pipe-line only if Russia were prepared to guarantee Poland's huge debts.
In America, President Reagan delayed announcing that drink and tobacco duty would be doubled while experts assessed the effect of this move on public opinion. Pakistan reimposed press censorship, Japan forbade organised sex tours of the world for its citizens and China ushered in the Year of the Dog.
A t home, rail strikes continued, ag- gravated by wildcat sympathy stop- pages by NUR members, and further ex- acerbated by reports in the Sun which alleg- ed moonlighting and debauchery among train drivers. As a result, ASLEF members at King's Cross refused to handle all Mur- doch newspapers, including The Times, Sunday Times and News of the World. Mrs Thatcher thought this a bad idea, but Mr Benn said it was justified. The TUC called for Budget 'reflation' to the tune of £8,400 million and Odhams, the Watford printers, announced closure with 1,900 redundancies having failed to reach agreement with the NGA about manning arrangements for new plant.
In the world of politics Mr John Grigg announced his conversion to the SDP, Mr Nicholas Fairbairn resigned as Solicitor General for Scotland after talking out of turn to a newspaper about the Glasgow rape case in which three men were not pro- secuted, and Mrs Thatcher called a meeting of senior ministers to discuss rape. In fact the rape season continued. A Glasgow psychiatrist denied telling the Crown that prosecution in the Glasgow case would be bad for the mental health of the victim; she threatened a private prosecution. A Sunday Times MORI poll revealed that 85 per cent of people consulted thought that rapists should either be executed or sent to prison for at least seven years, but 24 per cent of the same sample thought that men are often convicted wrongly of rape. A 54-year-old woman claiming to have been a MI5 agent defected to the Sundt 24,revo4ed that sgeltgat gft eel toln- filtratthel G at Bit-
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olive authorities in five major cities including the icielropolitan area threatened a cut of 5,600 policemen in pro- test against government cuts, but ILEA advertised for male and female homosex- ualists to organise groups of similarly in- clined teenagers. A female teacher in Lon- don was refused permission to prosecute a parent who had assaulted her. The magistrate said she should expect to be assaulted another six or seven times in her career as a teacher. Bookies withheld pay- ment on 140-1 double place bets in a three- horse race at Kempton after the favourite was pulled up. The Labour Party expressed indignation that the Department of Health had kept its bargain to sell part of St George's Hospital back to the Duke of Westminster at the 1909 purchase price. Mr Aubrey Singer won what he called the BBC mouse-race to end up as deputy to Mr Alasdair Milne, the director-general.
A survey for the Cockcroft Committee revealed that three out of ten adults in Great Britain were incapable of the simplest sums of subtraction, multiplication or divi- sion; one out of ten was incapable of addi- tion. Le Gavroche restaurant, in Upper Brook Street, became the first in the British Isles to be awarded three stars in Michelin. Land's End was sold to a British businessman called Mr David Goldstone. Dr Edouardo Frei, the disastrously inept Christian Democrat president of Chile from 1964 to 1970, died at 71. Mikhail Suslov, Soviet Communist Party secretary since 1947, died at 79. Hamlet, the Algonquin `Ile wants to be a striking train driver when he grows up.'
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