—Portrait of the Week
MPS CAME BACK after the hols., and mem- bers of the Committee of 100 sat down in the central lobby and had to be carried out. Lord Lambton told his constituents that there had been a Cabinet crisis—`shelved, not settled'—over the future of Northern Rhodesia. Mr. Marples, the Minister of Transport, told Dr. Beeehing, Chair- man of the British Transport Commission, not to settle the railwaymen's claims for more pay him- self but to submit them to arbitration (which under Mr. Lloyd's new way of doing things would not commit the Government), and Dr. Becching is reported to have told Mr. Marples to do his own dirty work. A railway strike looked likely. Post office workers went on slowly working to rule. MPS CAME BACK after the hols., and mem- bers of the Committee of 100 sat down in the central lobby and had to be carried out. Lord Lambton told his constituents that there had been a Cabinet crisis—`shelved, not settled'—over the future of Northern Rhodesia. Mr. Marples, the Minister of Transport, told Dr. Beeehing, Chair- man of the British Transport Commission, not to settle the railwaymen's claims for more pay him- self but to submit them to arbitration (which under Mr. Lloyd's new way of doing things would not commit the Government), and Dr. Becching is reported to have told Mr. Marples to do his own dirty work. A railway strike looked likely. Post office workers went on slowly working to rule.
MR. JULIUS NYERERE resigned as Prime Minister of Tanganyika after less than six weeks in the job and of Tanganyikan independence. After having been in .force for less than two years the Anglo- Nigerian defence agreement was jointly abrogated. having proved (in the words of the Guardian) 'politically explosive, diplomatically embarrassing and, practically, useless.' There were rebel Cong- olese raids on Roman Catholic missions, and U Thant asked for more United Nations troops for the Congo. A Bulgarian air ,force officer crash- landed his jet aircraft near a NATO missile- launching base in Italy, and was variously sup- posed to be spying or choosing freedom. The Laotian princes got together to form a neutralist coalition government; the United States Govern- ment was worried about the military coup in the Dominican Republic and moved to take economic sanctions against the new government there; there were street battles in Teheran; and bombs con- tinued to go off in various Algerian towns and in Paris—one of them in the French Foreign Office. Guatemalans invaded British Honduras and tore down the Union Jack; shots were fired in all directions and didn't hit anybody.
AN UNVACCINATED BRADFORD PATHOLOGIST was the seventh victim of the smallpox epidemic, in spite of his having been treated with a new drug known as 'Compound 33.' Half a million doses of American vaccine were flown to Britain. The Minister of Health produced a plan for more hospitals; the Home Secretary launched a national recruiting campaign for more policemen; and the Minister of Works said that it would now cost at least £85,000 to make Kensington Palace fit for Princess Margaret and her family to live in. Banks and insurance companies offered cheaper finance for export; ICI continued to make passes at Courtaulds; and a number of independent British airlines, including the two that ferry cars to the Continent, got together in a combine worth twenty million pounds and nearly half the size of BEA.
THE LOCAL AUTHORITY KICKED a couple of hundred gipsies out of Darenth Woods in Kent—nobody knew, and few cared, where they had kicked them to. It was announced where Prince Charles was going to school (Gordonstoun), and argument continued over the suitability of where Lord Snowdon was going to work (the Sunday Times). The new British weekly paper Topic sacked half its editorial staff, and the American weekly paper Time had to appear in France with a blank cover Instead of the proposed portrait of General Satan. The editor of the English-language daily news- Paper Beirut was expelled from the Lebanon; it Was understood that his headline, 'The Govern- ment Cracks Down' (over the story of a coup that was suppressed) was taken by the Lebanese authorities to mean 'The Government Cracks Up.' And a new game, introduced on TV, Spot the House Guest, began to sweep Britain.
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