Portrait of the Week , THE,PRIME MINISTER flew specially from the
West Indies to meet President Kennedy at Key West; President Kennedy, having flown specially to Key West, flew back to meet Mr. Gromyko in Wash- ington; there was a special• midnight meeting of the Cabinet, and a specially-convened conference of SEATO. And it began to look, as a result of all or some of this, that the crisis in Laos might be solved without war.
'AN EVENT OF THIS KIND is a terrible blow', said Mr. Macmillan of the events that had led to the secrets trial, and announced that a committee would he set up to inquire into security arrange- ments at the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment. Mr. Gaitskell and his shadow cab- inet turned down a request from seventy-seven Labour members to restore the whip to the five Labour Party 'rebels.' Mr. Crossman. chairman of the party, who had been one of the signatories. appealed for 'unity and political commonsense' over defence in his speech to the party's Scottish council, but devoted most of his speech to suggest- ing new forms of public ownership as part of the new Labour policy being prepared for the autumn. There were members of all three parties among the sponsors of the Peerages (Renuncia- tion) Bill, which would enable peers to sit in the Commons. The leaders of both parties in the LCC said that as the Government wouldn't build a National Theatre on the South Bank, the LCC probably would.
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I HE COLONIAL SECRETARY arrived in Dar-es-Salaam to discuss self-government for Tanganyika, ex- pected in May. Next door, in Uganda, the Demo- cratic Party gained a majority in the new Legisla- ture, and also began to look ahead to preparations for self-government. In Kenya, the third of the East African territories likely eventually to be united, the Government denied that Jomo Ken- yalta had been ill-treated in prison and detention, as alleged by Tom Mboya, who also said that 'whether the British like it or not no government will be formed in Kenya unless it is led by Jomo Kenyatta'. At the United Nations, Ghana asked for economic and diplomatic sanctions against South Africa.
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No ORI k I POLITICAL CHANGES were discerned in the results of the Belgian general election except by the Daily. Worker, which gave the headline 'Communist Vote Sdars' to the story that the party had put on 63,823 votes since 1958 (population of Belgium : nine million), won three more seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and kept its single one iii the Senate. Finland.was admitted to association with the European Free Trade Area (the Outer Seven) but not to full membership, because of most-favoured-nation agreements with the Soviet Union.
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MR. ROY THOMSON denied reports that he was after the Daily Mail and the Daily Sketch, and the Daily Sketch denied that it was closing down, though its management said that it was 'seeking the co-operation of the unions in economy measures.' Glasgow teachers threatened a one- week strike as a protest against the 'dilution' of the profession and to emphasise its demand for negotiation on a wage claim. Further negotiations looked likely in the dispute between the unions and provincial bus owners, in an attempt to avert the strike threatened for May or June. Backing a report from the standing nursing advisory com- mittee, the Minister of Health appealed to hospitals to stop waking up their patients at five in the morning. Miss Elizabeth Taylor, the film actress, left the London Clinic, for London Air- port, and was mobbed by admirers who broke the hood and a door of her motor-car, as well as a photographer's arm. Sympathy for the sick actress in her ordeal was somewhat mitigated by the news that her husband had announced the time of her departure.
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