PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
`Soon there won't be anything left to fiddle' A ferocious Atlantic storm blew unex- pectedly across southern England: hurricane-force winds caused the greatest damage to Britain in a single incident since the second world war. More than 20 people died as a result of the storm, thought to have been the worst since 1703 when it was believed 8,000 lives were lost. The whole of London and the south-east were blacked out for several hours. Among local reports of great devastation, Kew Gardens said that it had lost one third of its trees. In one county, Kent, the damage was estimated at some £2 million. Flooding in Wales caused the collapse of a railway bridge: a train fell into the swollen river Tywi killing four people. The Queen accepted the resigna- tion of her Governor General in Fiji 'with regret'. At the Commonwealth Conference in Canada it was announced that, following the coup, Fiji had forfeited its membership of the Commonwealth. At the conference itself Mrs Thatcher was cast in the role of pariah for her continued stand against applying further sanctions to South Africa. She attacked Mr Robert Mugabe of Zim- babwe who had accused her of 'racism': 'We help them with aid. We brought them to independence. We help train their army.' Since 1980, she said, £800 million of aid had been given to the 'front line' African states. Less than two months after Michael Ryan's day of carnage in Hunger- ford, another 'gun enthusiast' went on the rampage in Bristol killing four people. Figures from the Department of Employ- ment showed that the number of people out of work had fallen by nearly half a million over the past 12 months. The number of those without jobs is at its lowest level for five years. The largest bomb yet found in Northern Ireland containing 3,000 lbs of home-made explo- sives — was defused by Army experts. Jacqueline du Pre, the distinguished cellist whose career was cut short by mulitple sclerosis, died at the age of 42.
IN ONE day's trading on the New York stock exchange the Dow Jones industrial average fell 508.32 points, a drop of 22.6 per cent, almost twice as much as the percentage decline of the worst day of the Big Crash of October 1929. There were also record losses in London, Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney and Toronto. The market price for BP shares fell way below the 330p price announced by the British Government for its £7.24 billion share offer. One London economist poetically quoted from Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral: 'However certain our expectation, the moment foreseen may be unexpected when it arrives.' The United States destroyed two Iranian oil-drilling platforms in the Gulf — used for military purposes — following an Iranian missile attack on a US-flagged oil tanker. Indian armed forces in Sri Lanka have broken through Tamil Tiger resistance fighters around Jaffna and seem poised ready to take the city. The 13-year reign of Amadou Mahtar M'Bow of Senegal ended at Un- esco when, after a fiercely-fought contest, the Spanish biochemist Frederico Mayor Zaragoza was nominated as its next direc- tor general. In Tokyo Noboru Takeshita described as a 'master of political com- promise' — was named to succeed Yasu- hiro Nakasone as Japan's next prime minis- ter. Both of South Korea's main opposition leaders — the 'two — have now announced that they will run in the forth- coming presidential election.
MStJT
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