Portrait of the week
rr he Times announced that 60 volumes of hitherto unknown diaries of Adolf Hitler, written between 1932 and 1945, had been discovered and would be serialised forthwith in its sister paper, the Sunday Times. The documents, purchased for £256,000, were of 'momentous historical significance' and had been 'painstakingly tested' by experts during the past two-and- a-half years. The historian Lord Dacre, a director of Times Newspapers, wrote an ar- ticle declaring that he was satisfied they were authentic. Two days later at a West German press conference, Lord Dacre was less sure, and by Wednesday he was asser- ting that the diaries had to be considered as forgeries unless they could be proved to be true. Times Newspapers announced a postponement of further extracts in the Sunday Times 'to allow further work on authentication'. Despite a decision by the shop stewards to reject the settlement, workers at the British Leyland factory at Cowley voted to return to work on a for- mula which effectively ends their three minutes per shift 'washing up time', in defence of which they had been on strike for over a month. Firemen rejected a strike campaign against a government decision to increase their pension contributions. A new £1 coin was issued by the Royal Mint and got a mixed reception from the public. Printing tycoon Robert Maxwell ran into severe opposition over his plan to merge the Reading and Oxford professional football clubs, and the Football League turned down the reforms proposed in the. Chester report. The National Trust strongly denied a Daily Mail report that highly paid members of the organisation were allowed to live at peppercorn rents in elegant coun- try mansions willed to the Trust. Fake Ber- nard Leach pottery produced at Featherstone prison fooled experts into paying £1,000 for three pieces. Northamp- tonshire County Cricket Club's grounds- man appealed to an industrial tribunal after being sacked for preparing unsatisfac- tory wickets. And an Essex policeman was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl 130 times in two years.
ardinal Basil Hume warned Mgr Bruce
Kent, general secretary of CND, that he might be required to stand down from the job if the unilateralist movement becomes 'more political'. Mr Michael Heseltine attacked CND for the number of Communists and left-wing Labour members of its ruling bodies: CND responded by declaring that this was a 'cheap attempt to smear the peace movement'. A Tory MP described Mr Roy Jenkins as a 'constitutional enormity' after the announcement that he is to be the SDP- Liberal Alliance's Prime Minister- designate. Mr Michael Foot, in pouring rain, inaugurated a six-weeks' jobs march from Glasgow to London. Business con- fidence was pronounced to be at its highest for seven years by the Confederation of British Industry. The Lords defeated an im- portant clause of the Government's right- to-buy legislation. Deaths this week include former Tory MP and VC holder Brigadier Sir John Smyth, former government PRO Sir Harold Evans, jazz pianist Earl Hines and Health Service union leader Albert Spanswick. Abroad, Ethiopian rebels kid- napped four British workers with the Save the Children Fund. Veteran Chancellor Bruno Kreisky of Austria resigned after his Socialist party suffered election reverses; the Prime Minister of Thailand, General Tinsulanonda, also resigned. The Socialists made considerable gains in the Portuguese elections, but insufficient to form a non- coalition government. In Poland, the authorities arrested Solidarity underground leader Jozef Pinior, and Lech Walesa went back to work at the Gdansk shipyard. The International Red Cross withheld its sup- port for the visit of Argentinian bereaved to the Falklands. In Brazil, the government discovered that three Libyan transport planes said to be carrying relief supplies were in fact loaded with arms for Nicaragua, and impounded them. It took three massive jolts through the electric chair to execute murderer John Evans In Alabama; Governor George Wallace refus- ed an appeal for clemency after the second attempt. Brisk sales were reported among insomniacs in Tokyo for a cassette tape of a
monotonous voice counting sheep. PJP
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