Word: blackpool
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Rejoice, again I say, rejoice!" The old hymn thundered from 3,000 throats in the seaside town of Blackpool last week as Britain's Conservative Party opened its annual conference. And why not rejoice? It was the first gathering of the Tory clans since their historic election victory last June. There was even a dollop of frosting on the political cake in the form of two important Tory birthdays: the party's 100th and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's 58th. It was, then, an occasion for especially lusty renditions of God Save the Queen and Land...
...hecklers in the back of the gilded dance hall of Blackpool's Winter Garden Complex were, for the most part, uncharacteristically silent. The debate, Labor Party Leader Michael Foot, 69, coolly told his party's annual conference, was vital to Labor's chances of ousting the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher is expected to call a general election by next fall, and Foot's warning did not go unheeded. After hours of impassioned speeches by partisans of left, right and center, the 1,229 delegates voted by an unexpectedly large ratio of more...
...first package, carefully encased in plastic, was found outside Britain's Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire. Inside was a galvanized metal bucket containing nothing, it seemed at first, but earth. A few days later, a second package turned up in Blackpool, where the ruling Conservative Party was holding its annual conference. It too contained a bucketful of earth wrapped in plastic, and apparently nothing else...
Sure enough, the first package of dirt, weighing 10 Ibs., was found the same day near the Porton Down laboratories, and analysis showed that it contained Bacillus anthracis. Although the box that showed up at Blackpool did not contain anthrax spores, officials said the soil was similar to that on Gruinard Island...
...debate over Thatcher's economic policies and the cold, uncaring image she presents have thoroughly unsettled her own party. The division and rancor that broke into the open at Blackpool were a harsh departure from traditional Tory civility. When Thatcher's Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, put forth a relatively mild motion on law-and-order, it was hooted down. Observed Political Commentator Peter Jenkins in the Guardian: "Beneath the incantations of the simple Thatcherite faith is a nasty tone of class grievance and sullen nationalism...