PORTRAIT OF A WEEK
A•disastrous fire in a village dance hall near Grenoble in France killed 144 young people. The emergency exit doors were locked.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Foreign Sec- retary, upset the Israelis with some forthright comments on a Middle East settlement. He warned that 'unless the Jarring peace mission was revived there would be a drift back to war, with the prospect of a further twenty years of tension and strife in the area. Mrs Meir, Israel's Prime Minister, arrived in London.
The Government abolished the Indus- trial Reorganisation Corporation, the chief symbol of Labour's interventionist policy in industry. While the row was still echoing, they abolished the Prices and Incomes Board for good measure.
Belfast turned nasty again, with riot- ing organised—according to Army in- telligence—by the nu. After several soldiers were injured by gelignite bombs, the Army threatened a tougher line with rioters. Law and order was the main theme in President Nixon's active cam- paign in the Congressional mid-term elections. The Democrats screamed foul, but the President had tangible evidence, in the form of rocks thrown at his bullet-proof limousine. The local government workers' strike continued, with obvious risks of rubbish dumps being used as ready-made Guy Fawkes bonfires. 40,000 miners joined an unofficial pay strike after their national leaders had agreed by a narrow vote to accept an offer from the Coal Board.
Cardinal Cushing of Boston. spiritual adviser to the Kennedy family died within a month of retirement, aged seventy-five.
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