PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The social worker.
The South African government warned Zimbabwe that if ANC guerrillas based there did not stop mining South African roads, South Africa would pursue them across the border into Zimbabwe. In Zim- babwe, Mr Douglas 'Boss' Lilford, a founder member of Mr Ian Smith's Rhode- sian Front Party, was murdered, and a parliamentary committee was set up to investigate whether Mr Smith had made derogatory remarks about black African democracy. Rockets were fired at the Sasol oil-from-coal plant at Secunda, 70 miles from Johannesburg, but missed. The French government gave three oil com- panies permission to look for oil under Paris. Leaders of the EEC held a summit meeting in Luxemburg and agreed on minor reforms. The UN adopted, by 107 votes to four and to the British Govern- ment's disappointment, an Argentine- backed resolution calling for talks to re- solve the Falklands dispute. Mr Gerard Hoareau, a Seychellois politician opposed to the present regime, was assassinated outside his house in Edgware, North Lon- don. Another man, reputedly a moneylender, was shot dead by masked men in the Duchess of Kent, a public house in Islington. It was revealed that the Egyptian commandos who stormed a hi- jacked plane at Malta had used too power- ful a charge to blast their way into the plane, thereby killing many of the passen- gers, and that the Maltese government had refused to allow the Egyptians to accept American help. Israel apologised for spying on the United States, an American having been arrested outside the Israeli embassy in Washington and charged with betraying naval secrets. Thousands fled from an allegedly harmless gas leak in Delhi. Japanese railways were sabotaged by a group of left-wingers who cut com- munications cables in 33 places and started fires, in protest at privatisation plans.
CITY of London detectives handed evi- dence of frauds, possibly amounting to £1,000 million, against Johnson Matthey Bankers, to the Director of Public Prosecu- tions. MPs on both sides of the House asked why there had been no prosecutions despite allegations of fraud dating back to 1981. The Labour Party's national execu- tive voted to suspend and investigate the district Labour Party of Liverpool, where the Labour-controlled council, dominated by the Militant Tendency, decided to borrow £60 million from Swiss banks to avert bankruptcy. The pound reached $1.49, its highest level for two years. The Church of England published a 400-page report on the inner cities, less than one per cent of whose inhabitants attend the Church of England, calling on the Govern- ment to spend more money there. A report into the death of Jasmine Beckford, bat- tered to death by her stepfather, criticised almost everyone involved in the case. Mr Ray Honeyford offered to resign the head- mastership of Drummond Middle School in Bradford, where he has been persecuted by 'anti-racists', if the council would offer him a suitable redundancy payment. Mr John Pierce said he was going to use airbags to raise the Titanic, a ruling by the Admiralty Court having removed the dan- ger that the British Government might lay claim to her. Two poets died, Philip Larkin
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