Alert over foot-and-mouth outbreak

1967 On November 18, we reported the regional veterinary officer for Yorkshire and Lancashire Tom Stobo, who had been put in charge of the emergency measures, warning that milk lorry drivers could be leaving a "trail of trouble" by handling infected churns and passing the foot-and-mouth virus on to empty churns.
The Milk Marketing Board had asked all lorry and tanker drivers to disinfect themselves between calls at farms. Mr Stobo added: "I am pretty satisfied that we are containing the virus within the prescribed areas."
A ban on the movement of farm animals was being imposed across the whole of England and Wales in an attempt to curb the spread of the foot-and-mouth epidemic. From midnight, animals could not be transported around the country without a special licence. Livestock markets also had to obtain licences.
The restriction followed the confirmation of another 55 new cases, the largest increase in a single day since the outbreak had begun three weeks ago. The total now stood at 495. The number of animals slaughtered in this latest epidemic had risen to 93,000, the highest total since 1923.
The international RAC rally had to be called off. The five-day, 2,500-mile event was due to start that morning but it was feared drivers and spectators would unintentionally spread the disease.
As a result, Yorkshire escaped. The outbreak had begun on October 25 after a vet confirmed a sow on the Bryn Farm in Oswestry in Shropshire had the disease. The new outbreaks of foot-and-mouth were in the districts of Chester, Oswestry, Market Dayton, Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Crewe, Macclesfield, Northwich and Cheltenham.
That year in total there were 2,228 confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth - the vast majority of which were concentrated in the north-west Midlands and North Wales. The epidemic lasted 32 weeks and a total of 434,000 animals were slaughtered.
The cause of the outbreak was thought to be infected meat legally imported into the country from Argentina and legally introduced into the animal food chain. Afterwards, the Northumberland Report
recommended tightening import
controls and animal hygiene regulations.
The next major foot-and-mouth epidemic started in February 2001 and this time Yorkshire was badly affected, with livestock and the tourist industry devastated.

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Terry Waite freed from Beirut hostage ordeal

1991 On November 19, we pictured a gaunt-looking but laughing Terry Waite as he was freed by the Islamic extremists who had kidnapped him in Beirut in 1987.
Terry Waite, the envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, had successfully negotiated the release of several Westerners held in Beirut before he was also taken captive. He was released with an American academic, Thomas Sutherland, seized in 1985.
Terry Waite was the last British captive in Lebanon following the release of journalist John McCarthy that August and 77-year-old Jackie Mann in September. He said his captors had apologised for kidnapping him and admitted hostage taking served no useful purpose.
In December 1991, the remaining US hostages – Joseph Ciccipio, Alan Steen and Terry Anderson – were freed. Later that month the remains of William Buckley, an American hostage who had been murdered, were handed over to US diplomats in Beirut. Two German aid workers taken captive in 1989 were released in June 1992.

Coma fan 'allowed to die'
1992 York-shire football fan Tony Bland was 22 when he went to watch the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989 at Hillsborough. In the crush, 95 fans died and Tony Bland suffered severe brain damage. Three years later he was still in a coma known as a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, at Airedale General Hospital, near Keighley. On November 19, 1992, doctors treating him were told a judge at the High Court in London had ruled they could disconnect feeding tubes keeping him alive.
The president of the Family Division, Sir Stephen Brown, said there was no "reasonable possibility" that after three years Mr Bland would emerge from his coma. Mr Bland's parents, Allan and Barbara, supported the doctors' court action and said they were relieved at the ruling.
In the High Court, Mr Bland's doctors at Airedale and other experts in the field said he could survive for up to five years but he would never recover. If food were withdrawn he would die within days.
But the lawyer appointed by the Official Solicitor to act on Mr Bland's behalf argued that to withdraw food from him would be tantamount to murder and said he would be appealing against the decision. Doctors agreed to continue feeding Mr Bland until an appeal was heard on November 30. Feeding of Mr Bland stopped the following February and he died on March 3.
In April 1994, the High Court rejected an attempt by a pro-life campaigner, Father James Morrow, to get the doctor who withdrew food and drugs from Tony Bland charged with murder.

Spy cover-up ends as Blunt is exposed

1979 There was Establishment embarrassment when a 15-year cover-up was ended and it was revealed that Britain had been betrayed by someone at the very top – the man who had been art adviser to the Queen until his retirement in 1972.
In a written answer in the
Commons on November 16, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher named Sir Anthony Blunt – an officer in MI5
between 1940 and 1945 – as the fourth man in the Cambridge spy ring.
The issue had come to a head over a new book The Climate of Treason. Its author, Andrew Boyle, said he had known
about Professor Blunt for three years.
Blunt's fellow spies were Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Harold "Kim" Philby – the man in charge of British intelligence's anti-communist counter-espionage from 1944-46. Burgess and Maclean defected in 1951 following a tip-off from Philby who defected in 1963.
Mrs Thatcher revealed that in 1964 Blunt had confessed to the authorities that he had been an agent of Russian intelligence and talent-spotter at Cambridge in the 1930s.
A secret deal granted him immunity from prosecution.
The security services did not want to risk losing his co-operation by forcing him to resign.
Minutes after the Prime Minister's statement, Buckingham Palace said Blunt was being stripped of his knighthood.
Prof Blunt made a statement two days later in which he claimed the decision to grant him immunity from prosecution was taken by the then Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home. He said he had come to "bitterly regret" his spying activities which were prompted by idealism. He died three years later.
Rumours of a fifth man in the Cambridge ring were confirmed in 1990 by a KGB defector who named him as John Cairncross.

PM Harold Wilson defends devaluation

1967 Harold Wilson was on a damage limitation exercise, making reassuring noises about "the pound in your pocket", as he defended his decision to devalue the pound. The Prime Minister insisted it would tackle the "root cause" of Britain's economic problems. We would "break out from the straitjacket" of boom and bust economics.
But as our report of November 20 indicated, it was a tricky situation for Wilson and brought back unpleasant memories.
"Uncomfortably aware that two previous Socialist governments were wrecked by all that flowed from their failure to maintain parity of the pound, Mr Wilson and his senior colleagues have spent 48 hours of agonised preparation for the storm which will break about their heads this week. Nobody knows more about the consequences of devaluation on the Attlee government than the young President of the Board of Trade who sat next to Sir Stafford Cripps at the news conference at which it was announced in 1949.
"That young minister was Mr Harold Wilson who entered 10, Downing Street as Premier 15 years later with a firm pledge to defend the pound and to rid the Socialists of their grim record as the party of devaluation."
The government was lowering the exchange rate so the pound was worth $2.40, down from $2.80, a cut of just over 14 per cent. Wilson told his television audience: "It does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued." The move had been preceded by weeks of speculation and a day in which the Bank of England spent £200m trying to shore up the pound from its gold and dollar reserves. The government had inherited an £800m deficit from the Conservatives when elected three years earlier.
The Conservative leader Edward Heath went on television to accuse the Labour Government of failing to safeguard the value of the country's money. He said: "Having denied 20 times in 37 months that they would ever devalue the pound, they have devalued against all their own arguments."

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Horror as blaze
hits Tube
1987 The main rush hour, including the dash for trains on the East Coast main line, was over for the day but King's Cross station was still thronged with people when a fire broke out in the Underground on the evening of November 18. The final total was 31 dead – the highest in an Underground accident since a crash at Moorgate station in 1975 killed 43.
The King's Cross blaze began in a machine room under a wooden escalator connecting the Piccadilly line with the mainline station, probably through a discarded match. Smoking on the Underground had been banned in 1985 after a fire at Oxford Circus station but smokers often lit cigarettes on the escalators on their way out. Many passengers were trapped underground. No-one was ever prosecuted – the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Railway Inspectorate decided there was no justification for charges.