Portrait of the Week
AFTER a few weeks of flurry on the home front, foreign affairs are catching up with us. In particular the Middle East situation again looks pretty menacing. This time it C'^`` is the internal politics of Jordan, and the West has been none the less anxious for not knowing at all clearly what has been going on there. It appears that King Hussein forced the resignation of the extremist Prime Minister Suliman Nabulsi, but until Tuesday was unable to find anyone to take his place. The former Foreign Minister Dr. Khalidi finally suc- ceeded at the second attempt in forming a govern- ment (apparently of much the same elements as composed it before). In the interim a military coup had been planned to depose the king and had been foiled, the Kings of Iraq and Saudi Arabia had offered their armies to keep King Hussein on the throne, and Mr. Richards, the Eisenhower missionary, had hovered round the border with a blank cheque for several million dollars. These events cannot have helped the atmosphere in Cairo where the US Ambassador had been trying for three weeks to wrest a satisfactory Suez settle- ment from President Nasser and his Foreign Minister, who not unexpectedly would have very little to do with the six principles approved by the Security Council before the Suez intervention. It now seems likely that the matter will go back to the Council, where no doubt the Russian veto will play its part. The situation in the Gulf of Aqaba is not much clearer—nor is it likely to be while the State Department and the Israeli Government continue to spar about what support has and has not been promised to Israel in the matter.
Other American activities have included a promise to the NATO council to deliver guided missiles to member countries this year (with the proviso that they shalt be used for defensive purposes only); a strike by the Postmaster- General who proposes to close all post offices in the States every Saturday until Congress increases its appropriation for the Postal Services—a resource which seems to be having some effect, since the Lower House has already voted most of the total; and a successful operation on Sir Anthony Edcn in Boston.
In France the Queen's visit has been universally acclaimed as a triumph for all concerned. The constitutional conference on Singapore has been brought to a successful conclusion and the area is to become a self-governing State in the Com- monwealth. Some parts of the agreement have been violently repudiated, however, notably by that stormy character Mr. David Marshall, the former Chief Minister, who has called it 'a pock- marked beauty shrouded in chloroform.' The most controversial clause is that which insists that 'subversive persons' shall be excluded from the legislative assembly. Archbishop Makarios has arrived back in Greece from the Seychelles via Nairobi. Sir Roy Wclensky is in London, re- putedly in search of greater independence for the Central African Federation.
At home the. Commons has been digesting the Budget and even the Opposition seems to find it difficult to select anything to spit out; the favourite candidate is the lack of any increase in old-age pensions. The petrol companies have kindly given us back a penny of the fivepence they put on when rationing started; some bus fares have been reduced, but not many—and not those of London Transport. Both theatres and cinemas are absorb- ing their tax reliefs themselves. In the defence debate Mr. Duncan Sandys has announced the setting up of a committee to prevent overlapping in Service HQs. He said that the West must in- creasingly rely on threatened retaliation.
The publication of the report of the Court of Inquiry into the dispute at the Briggs Motor Works has not provided much balm to the feelings of the workers. It says that Mr. McLoughlin, who originally started the stoppage by ringing his bell, had done so without any justification and recommends a thorough investigation by the unions of the methods employed by, and the funds controlled by, the shop-stewards. This report, dubbed by one shop-steward as 'a proper stinker,' seems likely to cause further trouble; the engineer- ing union has been asked to call an official strike in protest against the decision of Fords not to reinstate the 'bell-man.' Another cat has been put among these pigeons by Mr. Jack Jones, the Labour MP for Rotherham, who has accused'lhe Communists of engineering the recent strike of steel-workers in Lancashire. The doctors are to have an immediate rise in pay, which, however, has failed to satisfy the BMA.
An inquiry is to be made into the procedure of hearings before magistrates—the result of some observations by the judge during the Adams trial about the publicity involved in the preliminary hearings. The West Indies cricket team has arrived. A new comet has swum into our ken and is said to be likely to prove 'the outstanding celestial spectacle of our age.' Oliver Cromwell's head is still in existence and has been ikept for many years in the study of a clergyman in Suffolk. Mr. Randolph Churchill has described his chastisement of pornographic press proprietors as being like flogging a jelly-fish.
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