Portrait of the week
Amid Opposition protests at the severity of the sentence, and with regrets from the Guardian, which handed over to the authorities the secret document she gave them, Miss Sarah Tisdall, a 23-year old junior clerk in the private office of the Foreign Secretary, was gaoled at the Old Bailey for six months under Section Two of the Official Secrets Act for leaking documents oh the arrival of cruise missiles in Britain. Miss Tisdall, who pleaded guilty but is appealing against the length of the sentence, was said in court to have beem 'non-political' and to have acted in a mo- ment of anger at government policy. In a television interview she said she believed Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine was avoiding Parliamentary accountability, and that she would leak the same kind of docu- ment again if she had the chance. On her state visit to Jordan, the Queen publicly ex- pressed her sympathy with the Palestinian people. In the United States, Senator Gary Hart won the Democratic primary in Con- necticut, thereby reviving his hopes. A British diplomat, Mr Kenneth Whitty, was assassinated in Athens. In Brussels EEC foreign ministers failed again to reach agreement on the British budget contribu- tion. In the High Court, Mr Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, took time out from the burgeoning strike in the coal industry to conduct the case for the defendants in an action brought by his union's pension fund against the NUM trustees for blocking overseas oil, gas and energy investments by the fund. The strike continued to spread, but moderate members of the NUM ex- ecutive decided to force an executive meeting and call for a national ballot. The National Coal Board adjourned its applica- tion for an injunction to prevent flying pickets from Yorkshire preventing men in other areas from working, and the Kent miners were refused an injunction aimed at preventing the police from intercepting their flying pickets at the Kent county border, a strategem widely condemned by civil rights supporters. AngrY
miners block-
ed the MI iTn Derbyshire,
he drama over the determination of the
Labour group on the Liverpool City Council to levy a rate £190 million below the city's expenditure plans embraced Labour leader Mr Neil Kinnock, who refus- ed to endorse the illegality involved, and Mr Tony Benn, newly-elected MP for Chester- field, who offered his 100 Per cent support. There was talk of a plan by Mr Ken Liv- ingstone, chairman of the Greater London Council, to provide cash for Liverpool by using the GLC pension fund to purchase Liverpool City Hall and rent it back to the council. Mr Livingstone's own campaign against the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties was boosted by a
MORI poll in the Standard indicating that Londoners wished to retain the GLC by a three-to-one majority. The Labour- controlled local authority in Islington followed the example of Lewisham in a crackdown on masons among councillors and council employees. Cadbury's, the chocolate firm, called off a treasure hunt after complaints that archaeological sites in Cornwall were being disturbed by people looking for their hidden golden egg, only to discover when they went to dig up the prize in neighbouring Devon that it had disap- peared.
Much to the relief of his mother, it was said, Mr Mark Thatcher has been ap- pointed to a £45,000 a year job selling Lotus motor cars in the United States, which will require him to live there: a Commons select committee on MPs' interests rejected a Labour complaint that the Prime Minister had failed to declare an interest over her son's role in the Cementation contract in Oman. Mr Donald Thake, 45, whose wife produced a sixth child three years after he had undergone a vasectomy operation was awarded £9,000 damages against the operating surgeon. And a mongrel puppy named Bruno caused a police alert when he knocked over a push-button telephone at his home in Fareham, Hants, and punched 999 with his paw. The phenomenal South African runner, Miss Zola Budd, 17, arriv- ed in England to claim British citizenship and the chance to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics. President Mitterrand of France paid a successful visit to Washington, addressing Congress in Fren- ch: he preferred to stick to his mother tongue, he told reporters, because he had once heard Winston Churchill speaking 'in-
comprehensible' French. PJP
'I've got lots of jobs for miners. How's your right hook?'
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