Portrait of the week
In Brussels M Couve de Murville told the Com- mon Market Ministers that six was company, seven, eight, nine or thirteen a crowd. The official reaction in London was that the French were getting rattled. The Nigerian army invaded the country's former Eastern Region, now Biafra. A Russian fleet arrived at Alexandria and its com- mander told the Egyptians that it would cooperate with their armed forces to 'repel any aggression.' Britain's charge d'affaires in Peking was summoned ft the Chinese Foreign Ministry to apologise for Chinese attacks on Hong Kong.
The House of Commons was in almost con- tinuous session. Mr Grossman told an audience at Shrewsbury on Sunday that if there was a Repetition of the July 1966 crisis 'the same sort of medicine would have to be given to the people.' He Subsequently explained that by 'the same sort of medicine' he did not mean a return to compulsory 'control of wages and prices, but only 'mass un- Mnployment.' Mr Cousins complained that 'Dick has the habit of blurting out the truth as he sees It. It might be best left unsaid.'
Sir Francis Chichester received his knighthood from the Queen at Greenwich. Lady Chichester wore a trouser suit for the occasion. But a peeress who wore one at the House of Lords was asked to leave. While Mick Jagger awaited the hearing of the appeal against his drug sentence, the hippies scored a point when San Francisco police dropped charges against Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nuro-ev of attending a marijuana party. Vivien Leigh died, aged fifty-three.
Mr Heath presented a new Conservative economic manifesto at Carshalton. It ran to thirty- four pages. The Government was expected to announce an increase in the price of school meals. lout the National Union of Teachers got in first with a call to members to ban school meal duties next term. The Ministry of Technology started tonic boom tests. Complaints were invited, but complainants would not be told if what they'd heard had been a boom. 'We want the complaints to be objective,' said a Ministry spokesman. But Mr Benn promised there would be no tests over York Minster in case it might fall down. London Bridge didn't fall down, either, but it was put nri for sale, and Winnipeg and Victoria were said to be interested in buying it. London sweltered in the hottest week of the year.
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