Portrait of the week
Mr Clive Ponting, a civil servant who leaked documents about the sinking of the Belgrano to Tam Dalyell MP, was acquitted of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Mr Ponting called this verdict a `tremendous triumph' and also a `tremendous surprise', which it was, as the judge had given very clear indications to the jury that Mr Ponting had broken the law. A bitter personal argument broke out in the Commons betwen Mrs Thatcher and Mr Kinnock, Mr Kinnock refusing to believe the Prime Minister's declaration that she had had no part in the decision to prosecute Mr Ponting. They continued the argument by exchanging angry letters. The pound as usual reached a record low, below $1.10 for the first time in London. The Home Secretary disclosed in a White Paper that successive Foreign Secretaries had ordered telephone tapping and the opening of mail, to safeguard 'the econo- mic well-being of the country'. The miners' strike entered its 49th week. The NCB refused to change its ground on the closure of uneconomic pits, when approached jointly by the NUM and the pit deputies' union Nacods. Two more of the board's leading managers resigned. Coal produc- tion reached its highest level since the start of the strike. Miners continued to return to work, but more slowly than the previous week. Mrs Thatcher celebrated her tenth anniversary as Conservative leader by saying that she still intended to make 'every man and every woman a capitalist'. An opinion poll suggested she had become much less popular. Lord Stockton told Tory backbenchers that character and tem- perament were more important than poli- cies. Nineteen Tories voted against the Government's plan to make water author- ities charge more. A one-ton bomb dating from the second world war was discovered in Sheffield and defused by the Royal Engineers. Eighteen RAF bandsmen were killed in a motorway crash in West Ger- many. Nine people died in an accident on the M6, caused by snow blowing across the road. There was severe frost in most parts of the country.
The editor of Pravda said President Chernenko was ill, but Tass said he had addressed the Politburo. He then missed at short notice a meeting with the Greek Prime Minister, and the Greeks were told this was because of the state of his health. Mr Caspar Weinberger, US Secretary of Defence, called on West Europeans to support the development of a space-based defence system, rather than 'become hostages to the Soviet Union as the United States retreats to an illusory fortress across the ocean'. In Poland, four !secret policemen were sentenced to a total of 79 years' imprisonment for the killing of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, but it was widely considered that at least one of them, Captain Piotrowski, should have been sentenced to death. The opposition leader Kim Dae Jung returned to South Korea. Despite previous assurances, his companions, including two American Con- gressmen, were roughed up, and he him- self was seized by security men and put under house arrest. Reports arrived from Sri Lanka of the massacre of Tamil civi- lians, and the detention of three English journalists, including Nicholas Coleridge. Nelson Mandela defiantly rejected Presi- dent Botha's conditional offer to release him. Sir Anthony Kershaw, leading a British Parliamentary delegation to the Sudan, criticised the EEC's 'arthritic' bureaucracy for failing to send food quick- ly enough to save starving Ethiopian re- fugees.
asparov again beat Karpov, reducing 1X.the World Chess Champion's lead to 5-3. The Jockey Club said it would investi- gate. claims about Lester Piggott's earn- ings. Matt Monro, the singer, and Sir William Lyons, founder of Jaguar Cars, both died, as did Lord Trevelyan and Major Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, the 'father' of English wine. The Government decided to erect Temple Bar in St Paul's churchyard. The National Theatre, claiming it had been betrayed by the Arts Council, said it would close its smallest auditorium for want of 'I know you can't beat 12 good men and true, but I'd like to have a go!'
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