Portrait of the week
Mrs Thatcher and Raul Alfonsin ex- changed messages on the occasion of his inauguration as President of Argentina. The Prime Minister told him that 'today brings new hope to your country', but also made clear that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands was not negotiable, that the 150-mile exclusion zone round the islands would remain in force and that the Government's 'Fortress Falklands' policy would not be modified. The US announced that arms sales to Argentina would be resumed, but that no weapons would be supplied 'which would increase the prospect of renewed conflict' in the Falklands. Mrs Thatcher went out of her way to state that all was well with Anglo-US relations, and that she had just had a 'customary warm and friendly' meeting with the Treasury Secretary, Donald Regan — at which their differing views on American economic policy were strongly expressed. At Presi- dent Alfonsin's inauguration ceremony, at- tended by former president Isabel Peron, his foreign minister, Dante Caputo, warned the US against taking any military action in Nicaragua. In Grenada, Nicholas Braithwaite was appointed head of an in- terim government; Sir Eric Gairy, prime minister until ousted by Maurice Bishop in 1979, threatened to return to the island; and all US troops, apart from 300 'policemen', were expected to leave by the end of the week. In Kuwait, bombs were exploded at the US and French embassies and other buildings by the Shiite Islamic Amal group, based in Baalbek, Lebanon, and supported by Iran. In Lebanon, US and Israeli war- ships fired at, respectively, Syrian anti- aircraft positions in the Bekaa valley and PLO bases in Tripoli. An agreement was disclosed for the supply of military equip- ment and advisers by North Korea to Malta. In Sudan, two convicted thieves had their right hands cut off before an en- thusiastic crowd in Khartoum — the first to suffer such a sentence under President Numeiry's new Islamic Sharia law. The air- craft carrier HMS Invincible was refused permission to enter dry dock in Sydney, Australia, for repairs to a damaged pro- peller, because the captain would not say whether he was carrying nuclear weapons. Sir Keith Holyoake, formerly prime minister of New Zealand, died at 79; Lord Carrington was appointed Secretary- General of NATO.
The National Graphical Association called off its national one-day strike after the High Court had ordered it to do so and injunctions had been granted to various newspaper publishers. The TUC employ- ment policy committee voted by a majority of two to endorse the NGA's proposed ac- tion, but Mr Len Murray, general secretary of the TUC, said that unlawful action could not be supported. Earlier, negotiations fail- ed to resolve the 23-week dispute with Mr Shah's Stockport Messenger group, and the NGA was fined £525,000 (in addition to fines already imposed of £150,000) for con- tempt of court in holding demonstrations at Mr Shah's Warrington printing works. A demonstration involving about 25,000 women at the Greenham Common Cruise missile base resulted in the arrest of 66; over 50 people were arrested in Scotland outside the nuclear submarine base at Faslane; 500 were detained in West Germany for pro- testing at the deployment of Pershing missiles; and in Moscow members of a 'Free Initiative' peace group were prevented from demonstrating outside the university. An American film, The Day After, about the effects of a nuclear attack on the in- habitants of a town in Kansas, was shown on independent television. The Defence Secretary, Mr Heseltine, apparently con- cerned that the film constituted propaganda for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarma- ment, elected to go on various television and radio programmes to state that it was 'the most powerful argument for our defence policy'. Off the Northern Irish coast, 140 were rescued by helicopter from the Sealink ferry Antrim Princess after a fire started in the engine-room, and 24 were saved from a fisheries protection vessel. A private aeroplane crashed near Stornoway in the Hebrides, killing ten; a bomb explod- ed at the Woolwich barracks in London, another in Oxford, and another was found in Kensington and detonated by police.
The Pope attended evensong at the Lutheran Church in Rome. Mary Renault died at 78, Lady Docker at 76, and Elizabeth Taylor went into hospital in California to be treated for 'a chemical dependency'. Two men were sentenced to three years' imprisonment in Glasgow for selling glue-sniffing kits to children — an offence under Scottish, but not under English, law — and a man in Oxford was given two life sentences for having raped two women. The Sex Equality Bill failed to get a second reading in the Commons, and a lecturer in north London was dismissed for making a joke about a black mongrel dog which the Brent council interpreted as a
racist reference to black students. SPC
'When do the knights stop drawing ink
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