Portrait of the week
A good week for drama at sea: Sir Francis Chichester was sighted off the southern coast of Chile and sailed safely round the Horn while a blanket of oil from the leaking tanker 'Torrey Canyon' was reported drifting towards the southern coast of England. There might have been talk, too, about oil and water, fuel and flames, concerning Aden, on which Mr Duncan Sandys and the Foreign Secretary exchanged angry accusations. Mr George Thomson, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, made a sudden visit to the area but found no enthusiasm for his offer of inde- pendence by November this year. In Sierra Leone, the party of the militant Sir Albert Margai appeared to have lost the elections but to the sound of gunfire refused to let the opposition take office.
General de Gaulle meanwhile took his election set- back quietly: 'infandum regina jubes renovare dolorem: he said as he asked one of his defeated ministers to explain what had happened. There was victory of a kind as French Somaliland voted to stay French, but there were widespread accusations of rigging and eleven people were killed in pro-independence riots. President Johnson and Air Vice-Marshal Ky met on Guam to discuss ways of speeding up the Vietnam war. Mr 10 demanded more bombing and Mr Johnson more pacification, while North Vietnam revealed that Washington had been pressing for direct talks with Hanoi.
At home the student sit-in at the London School of Economics came to an end after eight days and the approach of the Easter vacation. The regulations committee, which includes the School's Director, Sir Sydney Caine, announced that it had completed a draft charter of students' rights. There was a swing to the Conservatives in the by-election at Honiton, where the Liberals came second and Labour third. Mr Emanuel Shinwell, lately resigned chairman of the parliamentary party, said that things were going the way of 1951. Two Rolling Stones were sum- moned for being in possession of drugs, a Gaboon Viper stolen from London Zoo was found dead in a house in North London, and the Westminster Bank announced a scheme to enable its customers to cash cheques through a slot machine.
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