PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
it's a doddle — I was sent here from Trafalgar Square.'
Ademonstration against the poll tax ended in a riot in central London in which shop windows were broken, their contents looted, and cars overturned and set on fire. More then 300 were arrested, 45 police were taken to hospital, and Scotland Yard senior officers blamed the violence by around 3,000 of the 40,000 demonstrators on a mixture of extremists, louts, punks and anarchists. Labour and Conservative politicians condemned the violence and accused each other of political manipula- tion of the event. Prisoners at Strangeways prison in Manchester also took to violence in the biggest jail disturbance this century, burning and breaking up the prison. A 30-second earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale, centred upon Wrexham, sent shock waves through much of Wales and central and northern England, damag- ing some buildings and causing the armour to rattle at Chirk Castle, near its epicentre. An Iraqi attempt to smuggle in 40 nuclear trigger devices was foiled when they were seized at Heathrow airport. Norman Teb- bit revived interest in a possible leadership contest in the Conservative Party when he told a journalist he would stand against Michael Heseltine if Margaret Thatcher resigned. The Prime Minister told a confer- ence at Cheltenham that the post was not vacant though there were 650 applicants. She warned earlier in the week that there should be no wild scramble to withdraw the British Army of the Rhine, even in the face of inevitable German unification. The Government named 20 high-spending councils who will be charge-capped, none of which are Tory-controlled. Viscount Linley waived £30,000 exemplary libel damages awarded him against a national newspaper.
PRESIDENT de Klerk of South Africa ordered a crackdown in violence in the townships after fighting claimed 18 lives and more than 200 homes were burnt. The ANC withdrew from talks with the South African government on a proposed new constitution. Nelson Mandela, deputy president of the ANC, offered to attend the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth this autumn if invited. Lieutenant General Nicolae Ceausescu, brother of the executed Rumanian dicta- tor, went on trial for the murder of seven people during the revolution. In Lithuania stalemate seemed to have been reached, but its government offered to have talks with the Kremlin. Tran Xuan Bach, a proponent of political reform who has suggested that the people of Vietnam would demand more democracy, was ex- pelled by the Vietnamese communist party from its politburo. East Germany's par- liamentary parties agreed to investigate MPs' alleged links with the secret police after mass demonstrations, and Colditz castle in that country, the former prisoner of war camp, was opened as a tourist attraction. President Mugabe and the Zim- babwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) Party had a landslide victory despite an unusually low turn-out of voters. A Dublin jury found that a farmer suing the Sunday Times for damages for libel was a prominent IRA member, but they awarded his brother £14,850 though they said he was a man of worthless character. The Chinese parliament proclaimed the con- stitution for Hong Kong after much behind-the-scenes diplomacy and fears for the colony's future. The possibility of full direct elections is delayed until the next century. Dom Philippe Aubin, head of a Benedictine abbey near Rouen in Norman- dy, resigned his post due to strong feelings for the prioress of the neighbouring con- vent, Mother Sainte-Marie Ephreme. She also resigned, and both abbey and convent are reported to be deep in prayer for their former leaders.
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