PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
For good or ill, it was Enoch Powell's week. His vehement attack on immigration led Mr Edward Heath to dismiss him from the Shadow Cabinet. The speech, said Mr Heath, was 'racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions.' Mr Powell accused Mr Heath of 'playing down and even unsaying policies and views that you believe to be right, for fear of clamour from some section of press or public.'
Steelworkers in the Midlands came out on strike in support of Mr Powell, and London dockers marched on Westminster carrying banners that read 'Don't knock Enoch' and 'Back Britain, not black Britain.' The meat- porters of Smithfield followed suit. None the less, the Government's Race Relations Bill, which Mr Powell had said would create a privileged class of citizen, had its second read- ing. The Conservatives opposed the Bill, but a couple of dozen of them—including Sir Edward Boyle, a member of. the Shadow Cabinet—abstained. There was no question, said Mr Heath, of his dismissing Sir Edward.
Elsewhere on the race front, the International Olympic Committee withdrew its invitation to South Africa to take part in this summer's Games. Britain asked the United Nations for severer sanctions against Rhodesia. The Rho- desian government was sufficiently undaunted to set about floating another loan. Mr Trudeau, Canada's new Prime Minister, called a general election for 25 June.
President Johnson, though willing to nego- tiate with the North Vietnamese government at any time and place, remained unable to settle on any time and place in particular. U Thant, who thought that Phnom Penh, Warsaw, Geneva and Paris would all be suitable, said that he had 'high hopes' that talks would start soon. But reports from Saigon of a major Viet- cong offensive in the offing suggested that the President was keeping his powder dry. In the struggle to succeed him, Senator McCarthy won the primary election in Pennsylvania, but his chief rivals, Senator Kennedy and Vice-Presi- dent Humphrey, were not on the ballot paper. A poll suggested that Mr Richard Nixon would beat any of the three of them. In Czechoslovakia, the Prime Minister, Mr Dub- cek, complained that the Russian ambassador was 'consorting' with Mr Novotny, the deposed President.
Mr Philip Thomas, chief executive- of the Co-op, was among the 122 people killed in a South African Airways Boeing 707 which crashed on take-off at Windhoek. A parachutist in Holland jumped from an aircraft and landed on the pilot of another: both died. British European Airways, though, suffered nothing worse than the cancellation of seventy-six flights and the loss of £40,000 in revenue, as the result of a strike in protest against an increase in canteen prices, ranging from a halfpenny on a cup of coffee to as high as twopence on a meat dish.
Previous page
