Alarm mounts over heroin: The week that was September 5 to 11, 1995.

Clear evidence of Britain's growing heroin problem emerged in official figures released by the Home Office this week in 1985, revealing that increasing quantities of the drug were being smuggled into the country.

There was a nine per cent increase in seizures of all controlled drugs, and 25,000 people were found guilty or cautioned for offences involving controlled drugs, a seven per cent increase on 1983.

The figures also showed a worrying increase in young people being affected by the drug habit, with the largest proportionate increase in the under-17 age bracket.

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In Yorkshire police said they had already responded to the drug menace by increasing the number of specialist drug squad officers in both the South and West Yorkshire forces.

The TUC was forced into a climbdown just before a midnight deadline after its threat to expel the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers over accepting government cash for ballots.

A compromise to avoid the worst split in TUC history was reached after more than six hours of talks, with the union accepting that it would accept no more government money for conducting ballots until it had polled its members on whether they favoured taking such financial aid.

Thousands of children were being educated in “crummy” conditions, said Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph.

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He made his remarks after a tour of dilapidated school buildings in Sheffield, and said there wasn’t much he could do about the situation due to government restrictions on local authority spending.

Sheffield City Council reckoned it needed to spend up to £8m a year over 10 years to bring schools up to standard. Sir Keith, who was also MP for Leeds North-East, told a press conference that a child would not necessarily suffer in education because “he or she has some unpleasant loos to use for a year or two of their schooling”, but he would use examples of poor conditions he had seen to fight for a relaxation of spending curbs.

A TV producer’s short cut to a filming location in North Yorkshire revealed a Roman wharf which served as an important settlement 2,000 years ago.

It was discovered when the film crew arrived by boat to film the Roman town of Isurium Brigantium at Aldborough near Boroughbridge, for the BBC programme The Grain Run.

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Producer Douglas Smith said they chose the nearest point on the river Ure to land, and found there beside them the sandstone blocks of an ancient wharf, revealed by an unusually low tide.

Markings on the stones – which were usually obscured from above because of collapsed river bank – were examined by archaeologists and confirmed to be Roman.

The Yorkshire Post foreign pages reported that 18 British tourists were injured when two hand grenades exploded at a Greek holiday hotel near Athens.

The force of the blasts, close to the swimming pool at the Glyfada Hotel in the resort of Glyfada, a seaside suburb of Athens, blew out windows. Tour company Intasun had 70 British clients at the hotel including a small party of hearing and speech impaired people from Birmingham.

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A report later confirmed that Black September Palestinian terrorists had claimed responsibility for the attack, aimed at putting pressure on the Greek government to release a Palestinian gunman arrested in Athens the previous week.