Jobs for Asian Victims of Amin: The Week That Was September 6-12 1972

Posts were available for doctors, nurses and auxiliary workers in different departments at many of the 175 hospitals covered by Leeds Regional Hospital Board. Psychiatrists, radiologists, anaesthetists and doctors with accident and emergency experience were needed, as well as ancillary workers.

Meanwhile Archbishop of York Dr Donald Coggan offered lodgings to incoming refugees at his home, Bishopthorpe Palace, and more than 200 churches were being asked to organise accommodation. A hotel group chairman who offered free rooms to 100 expelled Ugandan Asians said he’d received several threatening letters and phone calls.

Keith Erskine of Associated Hotels had offered rooms at nine hotels. He dismissed the threats as “crackpot”, and said the offer stood.

President of Uganda Idi Amin had ordered the expulsion of his country’s Asian minority in early August, giving them 90 days to leave the country. He said that he had had a dream in which Allah told him to order the expulsion. The government believed Asians were hoarding goods and money, to the detriment of the indigenous Ugandan population and the economy.

All nine of the Israeli athletes kidnapped from the Olympic Village in Munich were killed in a gun battle at an airport close to the city this week in 1972. A police officer also died in the shooting at the Furstenfeldbruck military airbase, along with four of the guerrillas from the Palestinian group Black September.

Witnesses at the airbase said police snipers opened fire on the militants first. A spokesman for the Olympics said the kidnappers had blown up a helicopter with the hostages inside and then opened fire on the wreckage with automatic weapons.

The guerrillas had previously threatened to kill all the hostages if 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel were not released. The bloody end to the hostage situation had come after a day of tense negotiations with the Palestinians.

Opposition leader Harold Wilson said the British Olympic team should withdraw from the Games in protest at the outrage.

An infuriating week at the TUC Congress in Brighton led electricians’ union the EETPU to threaten to quit the TUC. The union, representing 380,000 members, said that among its grievances were that its argument claiming unions had the right to make their own decisions about registration was overruled and it had been refused the right to speak at a debate on the Industrial Relations Act.

The Council of Building Society Associations announced an imminent interest rise of half of one per cent to 8.5 per cent. It would mean an increase in the average monthly repayment of £1.55. One major building society said new home owners were now paying an average of £10 a week in repayments. The Nationwide said the average loan was now £5,316.

Leeds City Council was about to cast off its ‘Scrooge’ reputation and give funding to four new family planning clinics which would provide birth control advice and treatment free to all, including the unmarried. The clinics were planned for West Park, Kirkstall, West Hunslet and Middleton.

The council already provided advice and treatment for 5,834 patients who needed it on health grounds. Its funding of the new Family Planning Association clinics at a cost of £36,000 a year, would increase traffic by up to 40 per cent and the cash would come from the government’s Urban Aid programme.