Portrait of the week
The deaths of 100 were reported from Morocco, as a result of rioting in the northern towns of Nador, Al Hoceima and Tetuan, near the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. The disturbances were apparently caused by proposals to increase food prices and school fees, and were pro- voked, according to King Hassan, by Marxist-Leninists, Iranian fundamentalists and the Zionist secret service. 'Student' demonstrations also took place in Mar- rakesh and in Casablanca, where the king was presiding at a meeting of 42 member countries of the Islamic Conference Organisation, which voted to readmit Egypt to membership following Yasser Arafat's visit to Cairo last month. In Lebanon, the Druze shelled President Gemayel's palace, doing little damage, and US navy warships off Beirut were provided with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles against the threat of attack by forces 'originating in Iran' and acting 'with the acquiescence of Syria'. In Bonn, General Gunter Kiessling issued proceedings against the defence min- ister, Manfred WOrner, alleging that he had been falsely accused of homosexual activi- ties and wrongfully dismissed as deputy supreme commander of NATO. A parlia- mentary committee was set up to inquire into the affair. A retired NATO general, Horst Kruger, was cleared by the West Ger- man Attorney-General's office of passing information about the British Tornado air- craft to Russia, and in Oslo the head of information at the foreign ministry was detained on charges of working for the KGB. After meeting Mr Gromyko in Stockholm, Mr Shultz, US Secretary of State, said there was no hope of an early resumption of the Geneva talks on reducing nuclear weapons, but that negotiations be- tween NATO and the Warsaw Pact on con- ventional arms would begin again in Vienna on 16 March, President Andropov said that Russia was ready for 'genuine dialogue' with the US. In Washington, Edwin Meese, counsellor to the President, was nominated to succeed William Smith as Attorney- General.
Mr Enoch Powell, a Privy Coun- cillor, criticised the Queen's advisers for appearing reluctant 'for her to speak as a Christian monarch to the Christian people or as the British monarch to the British people'. The counsel which she received, according to Mr Powell, was 'pregnant with peril for the future': referring apparently to the Queen's Christmas broadcast, he said that she seemed to have 'the interests and affairs of other countries in other contin- ents as much, or more, at heart than those of her own people'. The Queen's press secretary said later that her Christmas message was not written on the advice of her ministers. The Defence Secretary, Mr Michael Heseltine, returned from a visit to the Falkland Islands to renewed criticism of the Government's policy which, according to Mr Denis Healey, was costing £2 million per Falklands family per year. Three Con- servative MPs voted against the Govern- ment after a debate on the rate support grant, and several others, including Mr Francis Pym, abstained. Mr Peter Heathfield, the left-wing leader of the Derbyshire miners, was elected general secretary of the NUM by an unexpectedly narrow margin. Mr Neil Kinnock and other Labour and Conservative MPs declined to attend the Wales-Scotland rugby interna- tional (which Scotland won), because a South African team had recently toured South Wales. Mr Denis Thatcher, a sometime rugby referee, met the head of the South African Rugby Board in Port Elizabeth to discuss the possibility of a tour by England in the spring. Mr Stokeley Car- michael, formerly a Black Panther leader, was refused permission to enter Britain from the US.
The continuing cold weather caused several deaths in Scotland and the north of England; two trains, north and west of Inverness, were lost for a time in snow drifts; and 17 were drowned when a cargo ship sank off Guernsey. JohnnY Weissmuller, who had six wives, five Olym- pic gold medals for swimming and played Tarzan in 19 films, died at 79. Peter JaY admitted that he might be the father of a child born to his family nanny while he was British ambassador in Washington. Dia- mond necklaces and earrings valued at £1.5 million were stolen from Christie's. The Roman Catholic matrimonial tribunal to Nottingham refused to permit Mr Stephen Rigby and Mrs Ilona Eradhun to marry to church on the grounds of his impotence. The Bishop of Nottingham then heard that there was a possibility that the marriage might be consummated, and decided that, after all, a marriage in the Roman Church was appropriate. A special meeting of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club voted t0 reinstate Geoffrey Boycott, and to express no confidence in the committee, all 01, whose members then resigned. England, drew the first Test Match with New Zealand at Wellington, and Franz Klammer won the World Cup downhill skiing at Kitzbultel. Austria, the 101st World Cup race of ids career. A group of rock singers called Crass admitted making a tape recording in Esses of the voices of President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher, which according to the Sunday Times had been recorded and published by the KGB as disinformation propaganda' The manufacture was announced In America of a cigarette, to be called Favor, which allows nicotine to be inhaled without
Previous page
