—Portrait of the Week— UNITED STATES MARINES landed in Thailand
to protect it against attack from the rebel Com- munists in Laos: the Soviet ambassador in Washington conferred with the United States Sec- retary of State, and said that the Soviet Union wanted Laos to be independent and neutral. President de Gaulle said that the destiny of Europe depended on 'solidarity between France and Germany. and that France must have atomic weapons of her own to determine her own destiny': he was eloquently vague about Britain's entry into the Common Market, and was under- stood to reject in advance any change in the status of Berlin. The trial of ex-general Salan opened in Paris and mutual blood-letting con- tinued in Algeria. Milovan Djilas, former Vice- Viesident of Yugoslavia. was sentenced to rive Sean' imprisonment (plus a tew years left over trot a previous sentence) for 'disclosing official secrets.' The MRP Ministers have resigned from the French Government in protest against President de Gaulle's European policy.
TUE CONSERVATIVES LOST 558 seats and the con- trol of 37 councils in the municipal elections: the Liberals' net gain was 332 seats, the Labour Party's 294, and the Communists' two. The Labour Party executive warned Lords Russell and Chorley and Canon Collins against sponsoring the World Disarmament Conference in Moscow, on pain of expulsion from the Labour Party and, al- though taking no action against CND itself, pro- scribed the Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Committee and set on foot an inquiry into Communist and Trotskyist infiltration of the nuclear disarmament movement. The Convoca- tion of York came out overwhelmingly against capital punishment, in spite of a speech from the Bishop of Durham, who said that he had seen six men in the condemned cell; that it took him 'a good fortnight when I have been at one of these beastly things to get it out of my system,' but that hi' couldn't vote for abolition—apparently on the grounds that it did a. man's soul good to know that he'd be hanged in the morning. The Liberal Party trebled their majority in Montgomeryshire.
IIIE EMPLOYERS GAVE the dockers the equivalent of a 9 per cent. rise, thus averting a national dock strike and making the Government's wages policy look silly. It also brought about still louder demands for more pay fur nurses, who were told by the Government that if they and the hospital managements agreed on pay increases exceeding 21 per cent. the Government would veto them, but that it would accept such increases if awarded by an arbitration tribunal. Or that's what the Government seemed to say. Tea girls struck at the Ford works at Dagenham because they wanted more money, and the paint sprayers downed tools to go out to tea. Eventually produc- tion lines became so congested that all work stopped, and five thousand workers wore sent home.
THE CAM BRIDGE UNION resolved that 'mon- archy is a pernicious anachronism.' More than a hundred 'royal personages' at the Athens, wed- ding of a Greek princess and a Spanish prince included the pretender to the throne of Brazil. In the course of a press conference :a Montreal Prince Philip said that the press should eschew gossip and innuendo, but that it would be legiti- mate, for instance, to say that his role in a par- ticular conference was tripe. Upon which there was a protest from a past president of the National Association of Tripe Dressers at so derogatory a use of a noble word.
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