5 MARCH 1983, Page 42

Portrait of the week

The possibility of a national miners' strike drew closer. The strike started in South Wales in protest against pit closures and spread rapidly to Scotland. It was revealed that every miner at the original Welsh pit due for closure had been offered another job nearby. The Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance won a handsome vic- tory over Labour in the Bermondsey by- election. On the eve of the poll the Labour party national executive voted to expel five leading members of the Militant Tendency, the faction with which Labour's Bermond- sey candidate had once been associated. Flushed with victory Liberal and Social Democratic members of the Alliance started to argue over whether Mr David Steel or Mr Roy Jenkins should become the next Prime Minister. To the open relief of Conservative leaders Mr Michael Foot declared that he was determined to continue as leader of the Opposition despite the Ber- mondsey result. Mr Foot described reports of his impending resignation as 'malicious fabrications'.

Vrom Matabeleland reports arrived of a

slaughter of tribal dissidents carried out by the Zimbabwean army. More than 1000 villagers were said to have been killed by the army in the last month, many burnt to death in their own huts. Mr Joshua Nkomo, formerly deputy prime minister and now considered to be the leader of a dissident movement, failed to regain his passport which had been taken from him. The Pope set out to visit the troubled region of Central America where he is expected to face opposition from both left-wing and right-wing leaders of the Catholic Church. Amid reports of death threats made against him the Times disclosed that he was refus- ing to wear a bullet proof vest while saying Mass. A new airport was announced for the Falklands, at a cost of up to 000 million. Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, Nobel Prize winner and anglophile, declared that 'the Falklands incident was a quarrel between two bald men about a comb'. Tennessee Williams died, but in New York. It was said that he had acciden- tally choked to death on a bottle cap. The deaths were also announced of Miss Winifred Atwell, the boogie woogie pianist, and Sir Adrian Boult, the gentleman and conductor.

During legal proceedings in America it became evident that the connection between asbestos and cancer had been known to the world's principal asbestos companies, including Turner & Newall, Bri- tain's largest company, for 40 years, and that the industry had decided to ignore it. A Blackpool teacher who posed as a doctor

and carried out numerous operations on women was jailed for six years. Many of his patients became seriously ill but there had been no shortage of new ones. He was only discovered by accident when he was charg- ed with speeding. Mr Ken Livingstone con- tinued to infuriate his political opponents, first by undertaking a visit to Sinn Fein leaders in Belfast, then by planning to allot £300,000 of GLC money to 'London's Les- bian and Gay Centre'. The price of gold fell by $50 an ounce in one day. Sir David Napley, the celebrated solicitor, charged West Yorkshire county council £.100 an hour for appearing in the inquest on Helen Smith. His bill was returned to him for reconsideratipn.

T n Brittany, a nun who drank a bottle of "port to celebrate the end of an All Saints' Day Pilgrimage, and then drove her car into the ditch, was given a suspended prison sentence. Lord Mountgarret was charged with criminal damage in Yorkshire after allegedly opening fire on a hot air balloon which had floated over his grouse moor. Off the coast of Mexico, an American tourist who had gone to sea in a small boat to examine a whale was killed when the whale surfaced beneath his boat and struck him with its tail. A survey taken in West Germany showed that 40 per cent of Wes.t. Germans think it permissible for then' politicians to tell lies to foreigners, and 20 per cent think that politicians should not have to tell the truth on German television. PI-1M 'We're conducting a smear campaign on the Darlington Labour candidate. Any good gossip?'