Portrait of the Week— C YPRUS AND THE LEBANON continued their
tussle for the headlines, Algeria having temporarily given up. the struggle. And a far-off country of which we know only too much came back into the picture with grim news from Hungary. Meanwhile, domestic soothsayers of every description tried to read the meaning of the 'Little General Election' results, and the London omnibus strike plodded on, all sense having long since vanished in the marshes of amour-propre. The House of Commons had been told before the recess that an announce- ment of the Government's intentions for the future of Cyprus would be made by Tuesday, June 17, at the latest, and the pledge had been renewed after the House reassembled. But on the eve of Mr. Macmillan's statement. M. Spaak telephoned on behalf of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Council to ask for a forty-eight-hour Postponement, so that the Council could use its good offices to recommend acceptance of the plan to the Greek and Turkish Governments, both of which had already rejected it. There was little demur at the delay, but much speculation as to What could be achieved in two days that could not be in more than two years.
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IN THE LEBANON fighting continued, and the general Impression was strengthened that the regime was not long for this world. When a battalion of para- chute troops was flown to Cyprus, observers were quick to point out that in addition to keeping order on the, island, they might be there to take part in the rumoured Anglo-American landings in the Lebanon. The tiny United Nations observer group, charged with the task of preventing arms being brought into the country for use by the rebels (a task which would have been almost Impossible for an entire army), informed the Secretary-General that the Lebanon had asked for United Nations intervention, and Mr. Ham- marskjold himself left New York immediately for Beirut.
HUNGARY, which had contributed nothing to the news for some months apart from a football suc- cess or two, came back into prominence in deadly earnest, with the news that the Russians had Ordered, and the Soviet occupation forces had carried out, the murder of Imre Nagy, General Maleter and others concerned in the events of November, 1956. The experts analysed the murders as a move in Khrushchev's campaign against Titoism in general and Tito in particular, but lay opinion confined itself to a more general reflection on the light cast by the killings upon Soviet protestations of good faith. Since the news practically coincided with the publication by the Soviet Government of their latest communications 11) the summit negotiations—which were unhelpful in the extreme, not to say provocative—Soviet good faith has had a bad week altogether.
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THE LONDON OMNIBUS STRIKE continued. Just before the weekend, Mr. Cousins managed to Persuade the negotiating committee of the Trans- port and General Workers Union that their Position was virtually hopeless. A delegate con- ference was called, and garages invited to mandate their representatives to vote for or against con- tinuance. But if the Union leaders thought that this was a convenient way of having the strike appear to end under pressure from below, they got a shock when the voting, which had been neck- and-neck up to the last moment, finally showed that a small but not negligible majority of garages Were in favour of continuing the stoppage. It began to look as though the Union, which has already Paid out over £1,000,000 in strike pay, would be compelled to dip still farther into its shrinking funds, The Trades Union Congress approved a plan for interest-free loans from other unions to help their felldws. At the docks, the Tooley Street men remained adamant and out.
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