PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Three men were sentenced to life im- prisonment for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock, who was hacked to death dur- ing the riot at Tottenham in October 1985. Only after returning a unanimous verdict of guilty did the jury learn that Winston Silcott, the ringleader of the mob, was on bail for a separate murder charge at the time of the riots. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Hodgson told Silcott that he was 'a very evil man'. Later, his brother, Stafford Silcott, described him to a cheering crowd as 'a hero and a martyr'. The Lord Chan- cellor called for a review of the 1976 Bail Act. In Parliament the Alliance parties joined with Labour to vote against a two pence cut in income tax at the end of the Budget debate. A Gallup poll privately conducted by the Conservative Party and leaked to the Sunday Telegraph suggested that the Alliance was now pushing Labour into third place. The Labour MP Mr Willie Hamilton was called to order in the House of Commons for suggesting that Tory Members were 'tomcats'. It was reported that an army corporal had ordered 40 junior soldiers to parade wearing only webbing belts and carrying mess tins. A bomb, possibly planted by the IRA, ex- ploded outside a British army mess in West Germany. No one was killed. In Northern Ireland, the IRA murdered a civilian and two policemen. The BBC announced that Mr John Birt, formerly of London Weekend Television, will be the new depu- ty director-general with special responsibil- ity for news and current affairs; also that Mr Tony Lewis, formerly of Glamorgan and England, will lead their television cricket commentary team this year.
SOVIET commentators anticipated the impending visit of Mrs Thatcher to Mos- cow, which they say they regard as an important preliminary to the forthcoming talks with the American Secretary of State, itself a prelude to a possible superpowers' summit later in the year in Washington. The Prime Minister prepared herself by meeting the French President and the West German Chancellor. The Saudi Arabian monarch, King Fahd, arrived in London on a state visit. Mr Neil Kinnock meanwhile prepared for a journey to Washington, where he will tell the American President that a future Labour government would, among other things, pull out of the bilater- al agreement over SDI with the United States. Labour's shadow Foreign Secret- ary, Mr Denis Healey, will accompany Mr Kinnock to America, although it had been said earlier that he too would visit Moscow in advance of the Prime Minister. A Soviet spokesman explained that it was not possi- ble to find a mutually acceptable date for Mr Healey's proposed visit to the USSR, as he already had a commitment to visit the United States with Mr Kinnock. A con- gressional report said that street trade in the United States in marijuana, heroin and cocaine in 1985 totalled $50 billion. A report from China criticised state em- ployees for spending too much time attend- ing meetings and sipping tea. Mr Willy Brandt finally bowed out of active political life in West Germany, following a row over his appointment of a 31-year-old Greek woman as his party's press chief. Miss Mathiopoulos — who suffered from not being a German, not being a member of Brandt's party and not being an experi- enced journalist — had in fact already resigned from the post, `to spare Mr
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