Portrait of the Week
JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS: the Government declared direct rule in Aden and the aircraft- carrier Eagle moved down the Suez Canal to be in attendance. Mr. George Thomson, Minister of State for .Foreign Affairs, in Cairo on the first official visit by a British minister since Suez, found himself unreceived by President Nasser and met by Prime Minister Sabry 'merely as a matter of courtesy."Courtesy' seemed an odd word as more British trpops were alerted and the Aden TUC prepared for a general strike. Courtesy seemed too to be strained as the Government of Rhodesia moved nearer than ever to a unilateral declaration of independence. The British High Commissioner in Salisbury flew suddenly to London and was followed by two Rhodesian ministers ostensibly entrusted with the re- organisation of Rhodesia House.
THE SCENE of the Lib-Lab flirtation moved, like an eighteenth-century novel, from Scarborough to Blackpool. Mr. George Brown saw no need for a general election before 1969, Mr. Richard Cross- man announced a spectacular new housing pro- gramme, and the critics of the White Paper on Immigration were roundly defeated. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Heath, received Maitre Tixier-Vignanco,ur and condemned Labour policy on Aden without explaining how it differed from that of the Conservatives. Mr. Christopher Soames reaffirmed the Tory commitment to Europe. The pound was slightly over parity with the dollar for the first time for two years, and Britain's tourist industry was reported to be our biggest single earner of America's money.
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IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE, Mr. Kosygin proceeded apace with the modernisation of Soviet industry, proposing reforms that looked to a Westerner remarkably like profits and incentives. India and Pakistan more or less maintained their pre- carious cease-fire but continued to differ strongly about what should happen next. The war in Vietnam see-sawed on with the Americans dis- covering a large supply of Soviet arms and the guerrillas grouping en masse north-west of Saigon. A Vietcong official announced in Budapest, how- ever, that the US retaliation had caused certain difficulties. 'Certain difficulties' were also caused by a US Congress resolution in favour of military intervention in the hemisphere, and Sr. Juan Bosch returned at last to the Dominican Republic, demanding a massive US indemnity.
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