Portrait of the week
Mr Ian Gow astonished his supporters by failing to clear his name after a damaging story had appeared about him in the press. It was said he had threatened to resign his post as Minister of State for Housing and Construction when the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer demanded cuts of £600 million in spending on housing. Since spending on home improvement grants has risen from £90 million to £900 million during the six years of Tory rule, Mr Gow might have been expected readily to agree to a cut, as he is known to favour monetar- ist policies. Despite failing to restrict public spending to the £131,600 target set for next year (housing will be cut by £65 million), the Chancellor told Parliament in the Autumn Statement that he forecast tax cuts of £1.5 billion next spring. He also said the pound note would be abolished, but refused to tell MPs whether overseas aid would be cut: they should ask the Foreign Office. The Opposition asked him what he was going to do about unemployment. Sir Michael Edwardes became chairman and chief executive of Dunlop and sacked 11 of the 13 directors, sparing only the two Malaysians. The Secretary of State for Social Services said doctors would stop prescribing branded drugs for minor ail- ments, saving the NHS £100 million a year. Mrs Margaret Thatcher, reacting in part to the worst violence yet seen in the coal dispute, said the Government would fight violence. 'We shall weather the tempests of our time,' she declared. Mr Enoch Powell was less optimistic. He said in Manchester: 'The prevailing mood of the nation is one of gloomy resignation and passive accept- ance of inevitable catastrophe.' Mr Nor- man Willis, General Secretary of the TUC, was booed by Welsh miners when he condemned violence. Mr Neil Kinnock supported Mr Willis, but was himself attacked by Welsh Labour activists. Mod- erates within the NUM renewed their pressure for a strike ballot. Several thousand miners went back to work. A light plane crashed in Sussex, killing nine people.
Nicaragua complained that the United States was about to invade Nicaragua, after the United States complained that Nicaragua was importing MiG 21 fighter planes. Each denied the other's story, and neither story appeared to be true. The UN Security Council agreed to Nicaragua's request for an emergency debate. Marshall Dimitri Ustinov, the Soviet Defence Min- ister, was said to have died, not having been seen in public for six weeks. Two Russian soldiers, who had deserted in Afghanistan and been brought to Britain by Lord Bethell, decided they would rather go back to Russia than continue to live with a Ukranian couple in East Acton. Mr Rajiv Gandhi .scattered his mother's ashes over the Himalayan snows where the Ganges rises, and called a general election. In Tripoli, two Britons held since May were charged with offences concerning 'state secrets'. In France, the newspaper Le Monde faced financial collapse. A 28-year-old woman called Evelyn Glenholmes, living in the Irish Republic, was named by Scotland Yard as a suspect in its enquiries about bombings in Britain. The Dublin government was said to be enraged by suggestions that its police had been unco-operative in efforts to serve a warrant on the suspect.
Lord Stockton made a brilliant maiden speech in the House of Lords. The SAS helped protect the Royal Family (for the first time in Britain, it was said) during ceremonies to mark Remembrance Sun- day. Chay Blyth was rescued off Cape Horn after spending 19 hours adrift with his crewman aboard his wrecked trimaran. Geoffrey Taylor, of Brockworth in Gloucestershire, who protests against pollution by cycling to work wearing a gas mask from the second world war, was warned by police of the dangers involved. Gillian Perry, a supermarket checkout girl, claimed compensation at an industrial tri- bunal for being forced to leave her job because of sexual discrimination, custom- ers having asked her endless questions about her sex life with her one-legged husband. The condition of a baby in California who had precociously set a world record, by living over three weeks with a heart from another species (in her case a baboon), was said to have deterior- ated. A Home Office pathologist upset many people by suggesting, without much evidence, that most cot deaths are caused by parents who unintentionally smother their babies. England beat Turkey 8-0 at
'She sounds like our kind of girl.'
Previous page
