Portrait of the Week
EOR a time, it seemed as if even 7 per cent. was not going to be 'enough; that the good done by its expression of the Chancellor's determination to maintain the £ might have been counterbalanced by the harm done by its revela- tion of the country's financial plight. For a day or two, brokers reported `no change; but gradually, after the weekend, buyers abroad began to pluck up courage; good trading news came in, with the announcement that the surplus on the balance of payments for the year ending in June was over £200 m.; and the pound at last began to make progress against the dollar.
Although the trade figures were encouraging, industrial unrest continued to cause anxiety; wild- cat strikes at the Nuffield works and on Clydeside —the latter a further manifestation of the absurd internecine warfare between the boilermakers and fellow unions—continued. The TUC has ex- pressed criticism of the Government's measures as well as its fear of possible unemployment.
Violence, long impending, finally broke out at Little Rock; encouraged by the attitude of Governor Faubus, extremists beat up negroes outside the school, and President Eisenhower felt that he could no longer delay sending in Federal troops, who have now escorted the negro children to school.
On returning from holiday Kwame Nkrumah announced that the contempt charges against the Daily Telegraph journalist, Ian Colvin, would be dropped; he took the opportunity, though, to object to what he termed malicious criticism, and to counsel using the courts for political purposes.
The French Government continued to wrestle with its intractable Algeria plan; defections from its Right wing appeared to give it progressively less chance of surviving. In South Africa, a Government Commission set up to inquire into 'undesirable publications' urged the appointment of a censorship board for books and magazines— but not newspapers, which would continue to be dealt, with in the courts. King Saud has arrived in Damascus to try to improve relations between Syria and the West.
The last of the great sailing barques, the Pamir, foundered in a hurricane in the Atlantic; fears that she had gone down with all hands were re- lieved when'a few survivors were found, but the extent of the loss of life made it seem improbable that barques would ever again be used on ocean runs. The deaths were announced of King Haakon of Norway and Jean Sibelius; also of Bertha Krupp, whose christian name had been immor- talised in the largest of all the German cannon, in the First World War. In the North and the Mid- lands, Asian flu continued to spread, particularly among schoolboys and footballers. Sugar Ray Robinson lost his world middle-weight title to Carmen Basilio on points.
Previous page
