PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
s the Prime Minister prepared to celebrate ten years in office, opinion polls taken at the by-election campaign in the Vale of Glamorgan showed Labour more than ten points ahead of the Conservatives there; the British Medical Association sent 150 doctors to the constituency to cam- paign against the Government. In an attempt to reassure customers concerned by 'consumer terrorist' contamination of baby food, Heinz and Cow & Gate announced that 100 million jars of baby food would be withdrawn from shops and supermarkets and destroyed. A man walk- ing home from Sunday service was killed by a gunman firing indiscriminately in the streets of Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear. Solicitors acting for the former Guinness chairman Ernest Saunders claimed that they could no longer afford to represent him on legal-aid fees of a minimum £100 an hour. Fourteen Liverpool football suppor- ters were 'invited' back to Belgium to serve prison sentences after they were convicted of manslaughter for their part in the Heysel stadium riot. Patrick Ryan, the Irish priest Britain failed to extradite from Belgium and Ireland to face terrorism charges, announced that he would stand as a candi- date in the forthcoming elections to the European Parliament. Students at the Lon- don School of Economics apologised to the widow of PC Keith Blakelock after they had elected Winston Silcott, who is serving a life sentence for his murder, as honorary president. Prisoners at Risley remand cen- tre in Cheshire rioted and staged a roof-top protest following an attempted mass break- out. Minorco, the South African controlled investment company, secured 54 per cent of the shares in the company which it is battling to take over, Consolidated Gold Fields. Sales of unleaded petrol doubled in the month following the Budget tax cut on lead-free fuel. Miss Betty Boothroyd MP, the first woman to be appointed as a deputy speaker of the House of Commons, appeared in public, modelling robes of office specially made for her by Hardy Amies.
A TORNADO killed at least 600 people when it struck villages in central Bang- ladesh; 100,000 were said to have been made homeless. Following reports that hundreds of Senegalese people in Maurita- nia had been killed in an ethnic slaughter by Mauritanians, Senegalese rioters killed at least 25 Mauritanians in Dakar, Senegal. May Day was marked in Moscow with a parade that focused on economic growth, environmental concerns and competitive
elections. In Poland the world-wide holi- day was celebrated with cries of `Down with Communism!' at a march in Warsaw; there were riots and violence at rallies in Czechoslovakia, South Korea, Turkey, Manila and West Berlin. Student leaders In China claimed that 150,000 people mar- ched for 14 hours across Peking in the most recent 'demonstration for democracy. Talks between Mrs Thatcher and Chancel- lor Kohl of West Germany failed to end the impasse over the proposed modernisa- tion of short-range nuclear missiles in Europe. In spite of protests by Israel and by French Jews Yasser Arafat was received formally by President Mitterrand, the first senior Western leader to do so. Figures for the first quarter of the year showed the US economy growing at an annual rate of 5.5 per cent. The United States and Japan announced that they had reached agree- ment on the joint development and pro- duction of a new fighter jet known as the FSX. The Vietnamese-installed govern- ment in Phnom Penh announced that it had officially changed the name of its counr.rY from Kampuchea back to Cambodia. Chinese people were banned from the onlY Chinese restaurant in the South Africa!) town of Boksburg. Lucille Ball, America s
first lady of comedy, died. 1\4StJT
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