PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The Labour party, assembled in conference at Blackpool, voted down the Labour govern- ment's prices and incomes policy by 5,098,000 votes to 1,124,000: the party's executive voted to support the policy only by the casting vote of Miss Jennie Lee in the chair; and-everyone then carried on as if nothing had happened. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke firmly to the Treasury brief: the Prime Ministef was generally thought to have said nothing in par- ticular and said it very well. He called Mr Enoch Powell a virus, and Mr Powell agreed, saying he was fatal to Socialists. Mrs Castle, hating to be placed among the great unloved, came out top of the party popularity poll.
The incomes policy looked no healthier on the shop floor than on the conference floor. Strikers at Girling and Lucas got their way: Sir Donakt Stokes, chairman of British Ley- land Motor, read the riot act. British Eagle, the airline, sacked 400 of its workpeople, pleading in justification an urgent need for economy.
In its first year, the Land CommisSion col- lected f462,487 in 'betterment levy,' and spent £2,384,000 doing it. But (said the chairman, looking on the bright side) it had collected another £2 million since March. Prospects of the same sort were visible from the Post Office, which began to charge for directory inquiries, surcharged most day-time trunk calls by 25 per cent, and put the price of an alarm call up to two shillings—at which it was vigorously under- cut by private enterprise alarm-call services.
The interlocked conferences of the Inter- national Monetary Fund and World Bank opened in Washington. M Schweitzer, secre- tary-general of the Fund, said that the dollar and sterling were coming along nicely. Mr McNamara, newly in charge of the Bank, an- nounced a programme of expansion in every- thing but the birth rate, and bid the Pope and Humanae Vitae defiance. So did fifty Roman Catholic priests, who wrote to The Times to say so. A Birmingham woman gave birth to sextuplets. The Daily Express pub- lished pictures of the Queen sitting up in bed, saying that they were Taken by Princess Anne, and the Press Council decided to investigate.
In Germany, the neo-nazi NPD, from which great things had been feared (or hoped) in the elections of Lower Saxony, won less than 5 per cent of the vote. This was thought so poor a result as to make unnecessary the proposal, untie, consideration by the Federal govern- ment. to ban the, party In America President Johnson gave up his fight to make Mr Abe Fogs Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
For youthful ideals, a bad week. The Scout movement reported the loss of many of its leaders—they disliked the turn towards modern- isation; and Peter Pan was performed- in Madison, Wisconsin, with six nudes in the Never-Never Land.
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