PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
On Tuesday the Queen opened Lloyd's.
The Labour Party won the Knowsley North by-election by 6,724 votes, com- pared to 17,191 at the general election. The Liberals came second, having pre- dicted a photo-finish. The Conservative, beaten into third place, just saved his deposit. The unemployment figures fell for the third month running. Mr Paul Chan- non, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announced he was bringing into immediate effect new powers to investigate improper share deals, after a director of Morgan Grenfell Securities resigned on suspicion of insider trading. Two people died and 71 were injured as a result of disturbances in Northern Ireland marking the first anniversary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. At Heathrow Air- port, Sir Robert Armstrong, Secretary to the Cabinet, attacked a photographer with his briefcase. He was on his way to Australia, to try to prevent publication of a book by Mr. Peter Wright, formerly em- ployed by MI5, about Soviet penetration of British intelligence. The judge in the case attacked the 'serpentine weavings' of the British Government. In east London, three Tamil students died in a fire bomb attack: five Tamil garage attendants were charged with their murder. Myra Hindley, one of the Moors murderers, was said, after 22 years in prison, to have told the police where to find more bodies. Four of the six teaching unions signed an agreement with the Labour-led local authorities, but Mr Baker, the Education Secretary, criticised the deal. The BBC scrapped one of its programmes after an unemployed hod- carrier turned volunteer stuntman fell 70 feet to his death, having been suspended by a poorly attached rope from a crane during rehearsals.
MRS Thatcher visited Washington for talks with President Reagan. Before her departure, the British Government said it would not do deals for the release of hostages, implicitly criticising the secret American deal with Iran, of which details continued to emerge. But in Washington, she declared her faith in President Reagan's 'integrity'. She obtained a guarantee of American support for mod- ernisation of the British nuclear deterrent, including the provision of Trident missiles. Wall Street braced itself for a 'financial Watergate' after the financier. Ivan Boes- ky, himself disgraced, revealed that he had tape-recorded conversations with other financiers. In Paris, M. Georges Besse, managing director of Renault, was shot dead by two young women belonging to Action Directe. Rumours that President Kim Il Sung of North Korea had been assassinated were succeeded by reports that he had been seen at the airport, welcoming the President of Mongolia. The Prince and Princess of Wales visited Saudi Arabia, at the end of a tour of the Gulf. In Australia, England won the first Test by seven wickets. In California, a blind man took over the controls of a private plane and landed it safely after the pilot had a heart attack. 'It was what you might call a miracle,' a policeman said. AJSG
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