PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'It's my bunker, I go down there when I can't bear to hear any more about the second world war.'
resident Reagan visited the former concentration camp at Bergen Belsen, and, more briefly, the military cemetery at Bitburg. At Belsen he explained that he had been inspired by the verdant German countryside seen from his helicopter to realise: 'There must have been a time when the prisoners at Bergen Belsen, and those at every other camp, must have felt that the springtime had gone forever from their lives.' He also remarked: 'Here death ruled. But we have learned something as well. Because of what happened we found that death cannot rule forever. And that is why we are here today.' At Bitburg, the President compared himself to a Jew, an Afghan, a Vietnamese refugee, a Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Nicaraguan Indian. He did not mention Adolf Hitler by name. Nor did he mention the 50,000 Russian PoWs who died at Belsen. The American ambassador in Moscow boycot- ted the May Day celebrations in protest against the shooting of Major Nicholson
last month. Two American diplomats were thrown out of Poland for attending a Solidarity rally. The Bonn summit broke up in disarray after the French had refused to agree a date for trade talks.
MRS Thatcher announced that the summit had endorsed her policies; Mr Peter Wal- ker made a speech in favour of full employment which everyone but the Prime Minister seemed to regard as an attack on the Government's record. The county council elections gave the Alliance the balance of power in more than half the shires. Dr Owen and Mr Steel promptly set out their conditions for supporting the next government. Mr Kinnock accused Mrs Thatcher of creating the kind of society in which fascism grows. Mr Gummer was offended by this. Sogat members decided by a large majority to retain the union's political fund. The man was found who had cast 799 votes for Mr Ron Todd in the disputed TGWU election last year: he did not want to talk to the press about it. Air conditioning at Stafford General Hospital was blamed for an outbreak of Legion- naire's disease which killed at least 30 people. Mr Enoch Powell's bill to outlaw all research on embryos seemed to have foundered after a wild debate in the Commons in which a Welsh MP damaged the Speaker's chair. The Government was defeated twice in the Lords on amend- ments to the Bill abolishing the GLC. After much dithering, Sheffield City Coun- cil set a legal rate. The Coal Board announced the closure of two pits in the north-east. Three thousand jobs will be lost, but so many miners have applied for redundancy since the strike that no one need be sacked. Four schoolchildren were washed off Land's End and drowned by an unexpected wave. The Government announced plans to pirivatise British gas before the next election, and British Rail privatised the lavatories at King's Cross
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