Portrait of the Week
THE. PRIME MINISTER spoke of wealth, of the difference between knocking along not too badly with a growth rate of 3 per cent and doing every- thing possible for the people with a rate 1 per cent higher. The Shadow Chancellor, Mr. Callaghan, spoke of the biggest spending spree ever embarked upon by a government in peace time. Labour gained Luton and the Government held on to Kinross. The Prime Minister said that Luton was the, end of a chapter and Kinross the beginning of a new one. Mr. Wilson thought it might be the other way round. The Prime Minister said he was spoiling for a fight and Mr. Wilson said he could have one. Unanimously elected leader of his party, Sir Alec at the new session promised legislation on housing, defence, industrial training and the police force. The Min- ister of Education spoke of an increase by one- third in school building, White Papers on Scotland and the North-East quickly followed and in France the housing programme had to be cut back because of the stabilisation plan.
IN BERLIN the squabble over tailboards on the autobahn ended with both sides claiming victory. The Head of the Soviet Studies Department at Yale was arrested in Moscow for espionage and Mr. George Ball, the American Under-Secretary of State, came to Europe and Bonn to talk about East:West trade. Governor Rockefeller of New York announced that he would run for the Pregi- dency, General Eisenhower said he thought that Mr. Nixon would run too and the feeling grew that only a Republican could handle Congress. A stormy session of the Alliance for Progress opened in Sao Paulo and the EEC postponed their decision on farm prices yet again. There was an attempted revolution in Baghdad.
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MISS JAMAICA was elected Miss World. Mr. Chou En-lai is to visit the United Arab Republic in December, Somalia is to have a Russian-backed army of 20,000 men for internal security, and no Cabinet Minister may now leave Ghana without the President's written consent. The Games of the New Emerging Forces, most of them Chinese, opened in Jakarta. The Congolese franc was de- valued by almost two-thirds, a measure widely regarded as inadequate, and the 20,000 guests at- tending the Prime Minister of Uganda's wedding drank 1,500 bottles of champagne and 60,000 bottles of beer. Mr. Randolph Vigne, the former leader of the South African Liberal Party who wrote in last week's Spectator, was arrested in Cape Town on an unknown charge.
MR. GEORGE WOODCOCK led a TUC delegation to Yugoslavia to see if the trade unions have any place in a workers' paradise. But there was more unrest at home: Ford's of Dagenham had their first strike for almost a year, the National Union of Hosiery Workers has ordered a go-slow from next Monday, though the boot and shoe men were given a rise. Pay claims of the provincial busmen were rejected without even being considered, Rolls-Royce is to abandon Christmas bonuses after this year, and the Society of Civil Servants voted against affiliation with the TUC.
THE PUBLICATION of Fanny Hill : Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is to be contested at Bow Street magistrates' court, Mr. Niall Macpherson is to become Lord Drumalbyn, Mr. John Hare Lord Blakenham; Lord Hailsham was adopted as the Consavative candidate for St. Marylebone and the Duchess of Kent is to have another baby. The Beatles arrived at Birmingham Hippodrome dis- guised as policemen, the Prime Minister's son was rusticated by Christ Church for failing Prelims and the Lord Mayor of London launched a £150,000 fund to wash St, Paul's.
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