Muslim School Set to Launch: The Week that Was September 13 to 19, 1982

The president of the Muslim Association of Bradford, Sher Azam, said there had been pressure from parents to open a school for girls because state schools did not cater for their strict religious standards.

He said: “Parents are so concerned about how their children, especially their daughters, are treated that they often send them to India or Pakistan to finish their education. They do not want to go on doing this because they do not like to split up their families.

“We have argued for many years with the education authorities for single-sex schools and about religious teaching and teaching of Asian languages in place of French of German, as well as school meals – but have got nowhere.”

Jubilant residents of Thirsk were breathing a sigh of relief and planning to promote their town as a tourist attraction, with the opening of the £4m by-pass for which they had long campaigned.

They were determined to sell the North Yorkshire town as a haven of peace and quiet, now that traffic congestion, noise and pollution were to be radically reduced.

The Rev Caesar Dupuis, chairman of Thirsk Rural Council’s Industry and Tourism Promotion Committee, said: “This is the greatest thing that has happened for decades in Thirsk, which was choked with lorries.”

In industrial news, a tribunal of inquiry led by Lord McCarthy recommended a six per cent increase in pay for Britain’s 220,000 rail workers. Meanwhile, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce claimed that jobs were being lost at home because the UK was being “too gentlemanly” in the world of international trade.

The ABCC said that Britain did not protest when other countries broke the rules and that we had become a dumping ground for cheap imports.

The Yorkshire Post reported that a mother who said her nine-week-old daughter was killed by a dingo had appeared in court in Australia charged with her murder.

Lindy Chamberlain, who was seven months pregnant, was accused of slitting baby Azaria’s throat as they sat in the front seat of the family car during a camping trip to Ayers Rock.

The disappearance of the child had happened two years previously, and her body had not been found. The original inquest concluded that the baby had been snatched by a dingo (wild dog), but new forensic evidence suggested she had been knifed.

Her father Michael was also on trial, accused of attempting to cover up the truth. Both pleaded not guilty. The courtroom was packed for the first day of what had dubbed “the trial of the century”.

The parents’ version of events was eventually confirmed by a coroner.

Yorkshire Television presenter Richard Whiteley was to be the first face to appear on Channel 4 when the UK’s first new channel for 18 years aired on November 2, said chief executive Jeremy Issacs.

He said there would be no big fanfare to mark the opening. Instead, normal programmes would begin with the YTV quiz Countdown, presented by Whiteley.

The opening night would also introduce People’s Court, a series featuring real-life court cases from the US, the soap Brookside and British TV’s first hour-long nightly news programme, presented by Peter Sissons and Trevor McDonald.