Portrait of the week
leven striking miners appeared before Pontefract magistrates and were charged in connection with a pick-axe handle attack on a working miner. Another working miner had his house destroyed by fire. A miner in Kent went IpayMq mrk after his 75-year-old mother Avilcollamed during a night attack on their hOtise. A: man pushed Mr Scargill and called him% 'Yorkshire yobbo'. Mr Scargill Achallengei Mr Kinnock to say exactly where h4 stands on all aspects of the miners' itrike at a forthcoming public meeting. 4vIr Kinnock gave Russian trade union officials the comforting news that §fifitterttritish miners are not at the point of starvation. The Coal Board said its pledge of no redundancies might not be honoured at pits which had seriously de- teriorated or been vandalised during the strike. It said the number of working miners had risen to 66,000. A sitting of the ' House of Commons was suspended when 30 Labour MPs, occupying the area in front of the mace, shouted down the Health and Sobial Services Secretary as he announced an increase of one pound in the amount a union is deemed to pay to strikers, and an equivalent reduction in the strikers' entitlement to supplementary benefit. The NUM was reported to be using suitcases of banknotes to evade High Court sequestrators. Its leaders threw writs which a bailiff was trying to serve out of their car window. The TGWU was fined £200,000 for contempt by the High Court, and will have its assets, worth £50 million, seques- trated if it carries out its threat of not paying. The Law Lords upheld the Gov- ernment's ban on unions at GCHQ. Eight Tory MPs voted against the Government, 40 abstained, when the Foreign Secretary unveiled economies at the Foreign Office. Many Tories complained about Sir Keith Joseph's plan to make the rich pay more for their children to go to university.
President Chernenko told Mr Kinnock, who was visiting him at the Kremlin, that if Labour denuded Britain of its nuclear defences, the USSR would stop making Britain a nuclear target. Mr Kin- nock also visited Leningrad, where he was informed by his guide that 'Lenin was constantly waking up in the night, making telephone calls and giving instructions.' 'He must have had a bet on,' Mr Kinnock said to his companions. It was announced that the US and USSR would meet at foreign ministerial level in Geneva in January to discuss an agenda for arms control talks. The US connived in a hoax story that President Marcos of the Philip- pines had nothing more than flu, while opposition leaders alleged that he was not merely very ill but had died, and was about to be replaced by a military junta. The British Deputy High Commissioner in Bombay, Mr Percy Norris, was killed by unknown assassins. In Kentucky, a man was given an artificial heart and told it might give him a year or two of life. The Iraqi minister of culture and information accused Iranian jailers of encouraging co- operative Iraqi PoWs 'to sexually abuse others who are not co-operating with the camp administration.'
he much-talking Bishop of Durham, 1 revelling in his self-created role as the Church of England's greatest publicist, said in his Christmas message: 'We have no right to insist on the literal truth of the story about the Virgin Birth of Jesus.' Miss Ange Stephens, perhaps hoping to win followers from the bishop's unfed flock, announced plans to bring fire-walking to Britain from California, where it has been popularised by Mr Tolly Burkan (formerly known as Tolly the circus magician) and is esteemed by the 'Human Potential' move- ment. The inhuman potential of a Califor- nian sex maniac was revealed: he had kidnapped a girl and kept her in a box for over seven years, only letting her out to rape her. A letter posted first class from the Times on Tuesday took only 48 hours to reach the Spectator, 150 yards away. The Australians beat Wales 28-9 at rugby, but were beaten by the West Indies at cricket (the tenth West Indian victory in a row), after which the Australian captain, Kim Hughes, resigned in tears. AJSG
'Arthur's let the Bishop of Durham's remarks go to his head.'
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