PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!' was the watch- word of the left. Mr Cecil King's suggestion that the Government needed a new leader quite over- shadowed the council electorate's suggestion that the country needed a new government. Labour tars refused to lunch at the National Coal Board because Mr King, a part-time mem- ber, was present. The Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, questioned on 'lies about the reserves,' more mildly implied that newspaper proprietors should not itch to interfere in matters which they do not understand. The stock market and the pound, which he had depressed, began to perk up again, both deriving encouragement from the April trade figures. These showed a deficit on visible trade of over £80 million, but at least were better than the March figures. Trouble for the moment seemed less likely on the financial front than from industry. The Secretary of State for Productivity (or Union Castle) met her first major check, a one-day strike that shut almost every engineering works in the country, and as a side-effect prevented all but two of the London newspapers (the Morn- ing Star and the Morning Advertiser) from appearing. She was armed with a Prices and Incomes Bill which the Parliamentary Labour party endorsed on Wednesday with forty-two Nies dissenting. The civil service clerical staff, angered by the deferment of a pay award, seemed likely to be her next opponents.
Peace broke out in Paris, shaken by its most extensive rioting since the war. Amid relative calm the first formal moves were made in the Paris talks about a peace conference for Viet- nam. In Nebraska, Senator Robert Kennedy won another Democratic primary election.
Miss Stephanie Sweet, the schoolteacher con- victed of an 'absolute' offence because tenants of her house were, unknown to her, in posses- sion of drugs, was given leave to appeal to the House of Lords. But the liberty of the subject suffered elsewhere, as ministers asserted the Government's prerogative to take away a British citizen's passport at will and without appeal. (Sir Frederick Crawford, former Governor of Uganda, had lost his for allegedly giving aid and comfort to the Rhodesian government.) British Railways ran up a deficit of £153 mil- lion and Mr Yehudi Menuhin is to part com- pany with the Bath Festival.
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