Portrait of the week A n inquiry was announced into
the way 1-1..in which Maurice Beckford had been able to starve, torture, and finally beat to death his four-year-old step-daughter Jas- mine in Brent. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for manslaughter. The three senior officers of Brent social ser- vices dep'artment, which had taken Jas- mine into care in 1981, all by coincidence left their posts, one to take up a new job as director of social services in Cam- bridgeshire, at a salary of £30,000 a year. She did not mention the Beckford case at the interview. Fifty British Labour council- lors spent four days at a conference in Spain, discussing nuclear-free zones, at a cost of at least £20,000. Mr Arthur Scargill told a Russian paper that the miners' strike had been a 'brilliant success'. The NUM executive decided, with only three dissent- ing votes, to abandon the overtime ban. A national strike ballot of postal workers was announced after four men were sus- pended at Mount Pleasant sorting office for refusing to use a new machine, and 800 more had walked out, temporarily defying a High Court ruling. The TGWU was seriously embarrased by allegations of ballot-rigging in its last elections for a general secretary. A great blow was struck against footbal hooliganism in England by transferring this year's match against Scot- land to Glasgow. A new law was announced which would give the Home Secretary powers to ban the sale of alcohol at football grounds; even the sale of soft drinks is to be controlled if they come in throwable containers. Fresh from this triumph, Mrs Thatcher set up a Cabinet committee to re- form the rates, as she has been trying to do since 1974. The Federation of Con- servative Students, an increasing embar- rassment to the Tory Party for its extreme right-wing views, voted to sack Mr Edward
Heath from his position as life patron of the organisation. ILEA inspectors de- nounced Ladybird books as 'sexist' and 'classist', and Tom Sawyer as 'racist', which led the headmaster of one London primary school to resign and become a church archivist.
Marc Chagall died at the age of 97. President Mitterrand's government announced plans to return to private own- ership some of the industries it had nationalised on coming to power. The wife of M.Le Pen went into hiding, to divorce him unmolested. Terms were agreed for the accession of Spain and Portugal to the EEC after Greek objections were over- come by a promised payment of £11/4 billion. Three Western kidnap victims were released in the Lebanon, .where the Shi'ite militias this week fought other Lebanese rather than Israelis, most bloodily in Sidon. In the Gulf war, the two sides settled down to attacking each other's civilians. There were food riots in Sudan. The bodyguards of Samuel Doe, the leader of Liberia, failed in their attempt to assas- sinate him. A World Health Organisation study suggested that the contraceptive pill might cause cervical cancer. Dr Luther Terry, who as Surgeon-General in the early sixties was responsible for the American government report which linked cigarette smoking with lung cancer and heart dis- ease, died aged 73, of heart disease. Congress approved President Reagan's plan to spend another $1.5 billion on the MX missile system. President Devan Nair of Singapore resigned his largely ceremo- nial post after his doctors informed him he was an alcoholic. Senator Edward Ken- nedy announced that he would like to be President some day. Last Suspect won the
Grand National at 50-1. ACB
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