‘First off the mark’ filing my election nomination and then canvassing the local newspapers after a pouring wet night making the river levels an issue. Tom King sets in motion an urgent review of Ulster funeral policing, Britain’s seamen’s leaders are balloting for a national strike BP have been fined £750,000 after three men were killed at its Grangemouth refinery
To bed at 11.00pm and awake by 5.30am, but a sound night’s sleep in between. Awake early enough to pester Di, before we got up as I needed my morning drink; still having my cold to cope with. It had been pouring with rain all night, teeming in fact, and the river rose strongly this morning, so that I had to send Daniel out to loosen his mooring ropes. Our older dinghy also floated off downstream, but Pete went after it and brought it back! I worked in my office this morning, preparing and copying leaflet delivery cards and then completing my new press release about being ‘First off the mark’ with my nomination form. I phoned Percy to try to persuade him to let me release it today and then spoke to Michael Pope, who agreed with me and I went ahead anyway. Dropped copies in by car to St Neots Weekly News and Trader, then drove to Huntingdon.
The Electoral Registration Officer pronounced my form OK and numbered it ‘1’. Then to the Hunts Post Office and on to St Ives for the Town Crier. Hastily home to have a late lunch. To St Neots for a haircut then, at long last. More work copying poll information from reference handbooks and so we only need the leaflets and canvas cards from Cambridge to get going. Worked late again, trying to tidy my office and then wrote up my journal as a means of winding my activity down. The news tonight is of an urgent review of funeral policing by Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King. He said that the recent circumstances of the murders were ‘wholly unacceptable’ as far as policing is concerned. Now the Ulster police have to sort out the Loyalists, who attacked the previous funeral and now the Republican men responsible for the two corporal’s deaths. And today another RUC officer was murdered. Britain’s seamen’s leaders are balloting for a national strike after 7 weeks of action by Dover sailors. P and O are attempting to forestall this by legal action. BP have been fined £750,000 after three men were killed at its Grangemouth refinery. It was the last of three fines for incidents that happened at weekly intervals in March 1987. In Panama, there was a national strike today against General Noriega and supermarkets defied the military leader’s threats that tried to make them open up. The US management of the Ford Motor Co has ruled out any chance of reconsidering their decision to pull out of building a Dundee motor electronics factory. At Land Rover, management and union failed to agree a deal and the strike there goes on. Blacks in South African townships stayed away from work today to commemorate the anniversary of the Sharpville massacre and the buses, streets and shops were empty. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy, the Bishop of Lichfield, is in the country showing support for Archbishop Tutu, ‘You touch one of us and you touch us all’, he said.