- Portrait of the Week— ALGERIA VOTED ITSELF INDEPENDENT and M.
Ben Khedda entered Algiers in triumph. But though the rump of the OAS had transferred its activities to France (where sporadic bomb-throwing con- tinued), the country still faced the possibility of violence. Success brought to the surface the latent divisions between pro-French and pro-Arab forces among the nationalists', there was much jockeying for position, and rumours of a military coup by M. Ben Bella, the vice-premier, who wanted to align Algeria with Egypt. The United Nations voted by 73 to one (South Africa) to ask Britain to negotiate a new constitution for South- ern Rhodesia which would give control of the government to the Africans. The British delegate walked out before the vote was taken.
DR. ROBERT SOBLEN; an American psychiatrist con- victed of spying for Russia, who recently fled to Israel, tried to commit suicide on the plane that was bringing him home to start a life sentence. He was taken to a hospital outside London where he seemed to be recovering from knife wounds to wrists and abdomen. Another hospital case. Sir Winston Churchill, was getting better from an operation to set a thigh bone fractured in a fall in his hotel bedroom at Monte Carlo.
THE BRITISH NA DONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT held a rally in Trafalgar Square. The meeting was stopped by the police amid scenes of abuse and violence which recalled the Thirties. Mr. Butler later said that previous meetings by the BNSM (a body thought to number fewer than a hundred members) had never caused any fuss, but promised a stricter line in future. The Immigration Act came into force. On the first two days fourteen people (none of them white) were stopped at London Air- port and sent back for not holding the necessary employment vouchers; but 1,500 got through. The Ministry of Labour announced that it would soon be compulsory for new cars to be fitted with safety belts, but not for the people riding in the cars to wear them. The Minister, Mr. John Hare, who had got into hot water for accusing certain Com- monwealth countries of 'behaving in some respects like children:. apologised in the House of Commons.
THE CIVIL SERVICE ARBITRATION TRIBUNAL once again ignored Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's 'guiding light' of 24 per cent. and awarded .186,000 Post Office workers a 4 per cent. rise. The nurses took their case to arbitration; the engineers accepted 3 per cent. from the employers. The Government finally approved proposals for a National Theatre and an opera house on the South Bank. The BBC is to have the third television channel, but the Government has reserved its decisions on the Pilkington Committee's proposals for ITV.
THE FOUR BRITISH CITIZENS IMPRISONED in Laos by
Pathet Lao forces were released after a month during which they claimed to have taught their captors the rudiments of cricket and celebrated the Queen's birthday with a bottle of whisky. The Duke of Kent got a telegram from Kent County Cricket Club on the birth of his son; the telegram said : 'Your county delighted with new player but concerned about Buckinghamshire birth. Will apply to MCC for registration.' The Leonardo car- toon was withdrawn from publiz display after a man had thrown an unopened ink bottle at it (causing 'negligible' damage); a full-size photo- graphic reproduction was' hung in its place, indis- tinguishable from the original but less expensive. Attendants at the National, Gallery discovered Jan Brueghel's Adoration of the Kings torn from its- place and propped against the wall in what looked like another attempted art theft. A pro- cession featuring Lady Godiva in the Coventry City Carnival was described by a Methodist minis- ter as 'diocesan-sponsored pornography.'
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