Portrait of the week
The dock strike drew peacefully towards its close after the dispute at Hunter- ston which had sparked it off was settled on the steel workers' terms. The talks to settle the Coal Strike broke down as expected: the white collar section of the NUM announced a national strike ballot; picket- ing allowances were cut for striking miners to 75p a day. The chairman of the Police Federation claimed that violence on the miners' picket lines had been worse than anything experienced in the race riots of 1981. Leon Brittan reminded an audience of Nottinghamshire Conservatives that the offence of riot was punishable by life imprisonment: Tony Benn denounced this as outrageous political interference with the affairs of the judiciary; and told his audience that it would be necessary to grant an amnesty for 'wrongly sentenced' pickets. Senior Liberals were sent details of a government plan more closely to control the nationalised industries. A cer- tain amount of indignation was aroused by this. Dr Owen warned the Social Demo- crats — with statesmanlike disinterest that the attempt to cover up the decisions that had led to the sinking of the Belgrano might lead to a new Watergate, and called for a White Paper into the affair. He also revealed that Mr Clive Ponting was a member of the SDP. Mr Bernard Ingham was said to have said that the government was trying to arrange for a suitably narrow- minded judge to try Mr Ponting. Later Mr Ingham spoke on the record, for once, to deny this story. Princess Diana's second son was born, and delighted the press. He will be known as 'Harry'. The pound, which had been sliding steadily against the dollar, suddenly started to fall against other currencies too, and at one stage was worth only $1.22.
he Israeli coalition government took 1 office as the annual inflation rate reached 400 per cent. It announced its intention to cut one billion dollars off the $22 billion budget deficit, and de- valued the shekel, then asked for more U.S. aid. President Reagan announced 'that he would meet Andrei Gromyko in New York; as Mr Mondale fell further behind in the opinion polls, the House Ethics Committee announced that it would investigate Mrs Ferraro's finances. Mar- shal Ogarkov resurfaced as head of a staff college. In South Africa, an Indian and a Coloured leader were admitted to the cabinet for the first time under the new constitution which gives President Botha executive powers. Six other Indian leaders asked for sanctuary in the British Consu- late in Durban, and refused to leave. Their lawyer flew to London, where no minister would see him. The Pope said in Canada that the nations of the poor South would judge the rich North. The French and the Libyans agreed to disengage from Chad. Anatoly Karpov won the third game of the World Chess Championship and leads 1-0. Oleg Bitov, the Russian literary journalist who defected at the Venice Film Festival last year, and vanished from London three weeks ago, appeared at a press conference in Moscow. He now says he was kidnapped by the British and Italian intelligence services. The Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, announced yet again that the Swedes would not tolerate any Russian violations of their territory; the Women's and Youth sections of his party called for unilateral disarmament; while in Austria the world record for walking with' three raw eggs fastened to each shoe was smashed.
outs Reard, the French car engineer
ho invented the bikini died, as did Janet Gaynor, the first woman to win an `Oscar'. The British Association was told that jogging could be extremely dangerous for men over forty, and frequently killed them; also that whereas only 6 per cent of the population had believed in astrology in 1951, 80 per cent did now. Angela Wil- liams, a twenty-two-year-old telephonist, became the first person to be prosecuted for smoking on the London Tube after she assaulted the off-duty policeman who had asked her to stop. The owner of the world's longest moustache sat on it in the bath, and the bottom three feet broke off. The new record remains unclaimed.
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