PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`I no longer desire to be a member of your -Government,' wrote Mr Ray Gunter to Mr Harold Wilson. So the Cabinet lost its only senior trade unionist, and the Prime Minister's leadership was directly attacked. Mr Gunter, politely making this clear on television, was also thought to hint that he would accept nomination for the Labour party secretaryship, challenging Mr Anthony Greenwood, Mr Wil- son's candidate. Meanwhile, Mr Roy Mason took over the Ministry of Power from Mr Gunter, and Mr John Stonehouse succeeded Mr Mason at the Post Office.
Other ministers were busy with inquiries. Mrs Castle asked the Prices and Incomes Board to look at high salaries in general, while declining to answer questions on anyone's salary—Mr Jocelyn Hambro's, for instance— in particular. Mr Crosland asked Lord Crow- ther to look into hire-purchase and other forms of credit for consumers. Mr Houghton, some- time overlord of the social services, and with no children of his own, called for a plan to restrict the size of families: this was, he thought, no longer `a purely private matter.' The railway go-slow dragged on, with the NCR, in conference at Penzance, rejecting a 3 per cent pay rise 'on account.' The manage- ment threatened to send men home without pay and the unions threatened that if that hap- pened they would strike. But the BOAC pilots went back to work, and so did the Ford lady sewing-machinists, with a bigger pay rise than they had even asked for, after meeting Mrs Castle for a cosy chat, a cup of tea, and a well-organised bout of press photography. Other militant ladies were to be found at Guy's Hospital, where the matron and her deputy (and successor-designate) resigned : they were understood to be at odds with the chairman of the governors, Lord Robens.
In France the Gaullist government was re- turned to power on a landslide with an abso- lute majority : among those who lost their seats was M Pierre Mendes-France: and on Wed- rwsday the French Bank rate was raised. In Greece the military junta was reported to have cancelled all government orders placed with British firms, in retaliation for Mr Wilson's phrase about the 'bestialities' of the dictator-
ship. The government of the United States secured an extradition order for Mr Ramon George Sneyd, the man accused of Martin Luther King's murder : Mr Sneyd decided to appeal.
The weather went to extremes, with ninety degrees recorded at London Airport and three-and-a-half-inch hailstones at Burnley. But the north was compensated when the Govern- ment promised money to help Liverpool City Council put Aintree on its feet and when Mr Freddie Trueman led Yorkshire to victory over the Australians with an innings in hand --the tourists' first defeat. Mr Rod Laver and Mr Tony Roche reached the men's singles final at Wimbledon. Mr Alec Rose neared Plymouth in his vessel 'Lively Lady,' which he had sailed single-handed round the world.
Councillor Sydney Moss, of Grimsby, put his photograph on the paper used to wrap sausages in his shops. His Labour opponent, whom Councillor Moss beat by twenty votes, reported him to the Director of Public Prose- cutions, alleging that the sausage-wrapping should have been classed as political literature.
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