Portrait of the week
Members of the National Union of
61 Mineworkers voted, by a majority of Per cent, against a recommendation from their president, Mr Arthur Scargill, to strike for pay increases of 26 to 31per cent.
He was widely criticised by miners for hav- ing imposed an overtime ban and spent "1°0,000 of union money on a campaign to gam support for the ballot. The outcome seemed to clear the way for the Coal Board 10 reduce output by 12 per cent with the loss of UP to 20,000 jobs. British Leyland workers voted to accept an 11 per cent in- crease, Rolls-Royce workers 4.5 per cent, but Ford workers rejected 4.9 per cent. The Victories by Labour at by-elections in Birm- ',gham Northfield (majority 289) and in Peckham (majority 10,811) were described by Mr Foot as a turning-point. The SDP candidates in the two constituencies were accused of employing unfair tactics during
e Campaigns.
„The general election in Spain gave victory k_401 seats in the Cortes out of 350) to the Partido Socialista Obrero Espaiiol, under tt,he. leadership of the 40-year-old sevillano, Felipe Gonzalez. He will become Europe's Y,nddgest prime minister at the beginning of uecernber. The government party (UCD) v,..od only 12 seats, the centre-right Alianza Nropular 106, and the extreme right Fuerza ,ueva lost its only seat. The imprisoned 'dlonel Tejero received 25,000 votes for his rParty, Solidaridad Espanol. The Pope ar- livated in Madrid for a ten-day visit, going on
er to Avila, Guadalupe and Segovia.
In elections in America, the Republicans nst retained their majority in the Senate but 1,, seats to Democrats in the House of eresentatives. The former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, ridiculed the allega- 1.011°d, contained in a book by John Dean, h11.1 P erlY resident Nixon's counsellor, that rwas the 'Deep Throat' informant esPonsible for exposing the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post. Apparent- f,.,in response to a more aggressive attitude th'''rl) Washington, Mr Brezhnev indicated e at the Soviet defence budget would be tn- Ert:aised- Mrs Thatcher's speech at the ,`1-1111 Wall was described in East Germany 38 `out of place'. At the inquiry. in aetrusalem into the massacre of Palestinians Se two refugee camps in Beirut in dePternher, evidence accumulated to cast 911h. t On the assertion by the Defence Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, that no one would have foreseen that the Phalan fists e;(34,11:1 murder hundreds of innocent civilians Disturbances in northern Nigeria, the by a fanatical Islamic sect, caused c"e deaths of about 450 people. Rioting oc- i_nrted in Brixton, south London, after the ima„nlbeth council started demolishing -uses in Railton Road.
In the courts, Mr John De Lorean was able to provide security of £5.8 million for his release on bail in Los Angeles, where he is charged with distributing cocaine. Mrs Lindy Chamberlain, who is expecting another baby, was convicted of the murder of her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, in Australia, after the jury had rejected her defence that a dingo dog was responsible. Mrs Chamberlain was given a life sentence and her husband, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, 18 months suspended, for being an accessory.
The wife of Mr Francis Radcliffe, barris- ter and Recorder of York, was given a divorce because of his unreasonable behaviour, which included: accusing his wife of being possessed by the devil, break- ing a court order not to enter her bedroom, and trying to make love to her in their garden. Mr Radcliffe, who conducted his own case, provided evidence of the shop where he bought his hats and claimed, by reference to Henry VIII, that the court had no jurisdiction to end his or any other mar- riage. The prosecution of Lady Nourse, the wife of a High Court judge, was dropped after a private hearing: she had been charg- ed with stealing two carpets, two handbags, two necklaces and five belts from Harrods. At the Old Bailey, a man admitted kill- ing his wife with an axe because he was embarrassed that lice in his hair might have infested their bed. The People's Republic of Mongolia formally objected, more than a hundred years after the word was coined, to the use of the term 'mongoloid' to describe those suffering from Down's Syndrome. A fourth television channel started in Wales, transmitted partly in Welsh, and later in England, mainly in English, though using language which led the director of one `This is nothing — you wait till we have to go to the Labour Party clash in Bermondsey.'
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