Word: viscounts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Conservative strategists spent the weekend analyzing thick printouts detailing the results from the 369 councils. Thatcher retired to Chequers, her official country residence, where she planned to meet with top political counselors, including Conservative Party Chairman Norman Tebbit, Deputy Prime Minister Viscount Whitelaw and Chief Whip John Wakeham. She reportedly intended to make a final decision early this week. If Thatcher's choice is for a snap election, she will inform her Cabinet, then ask Queen Elizabeth to dissolve Parliament. The favored election date is June...
...avoid that fate, British lords have been known to give up their titles. Like Sir Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Viscount Stansgate, who gave up his title and most of his name (he goes by Tony Benn now) to keep his seat in the Commons. It's not clear what a comparable rule in this country might be, though a vow never to appear on Carson or eat at Elaine's would be a start...
Throughout the three-week campaign in the north Midlands mining and market town, Benn had stressed such traditional Labor issues as jobs and health care, avoiding any reference to his more radical positions. These include his firm opposition to the House of Lords (he legally renounced his title of Viscount Stansgate in 1963) and Britain's participation in NATO and the European Community. But on one issue Benn was unable to contain himself. Charging that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was planning to "destroy all unions," he condemned the government's decision to ban union membership at the supersecret...
...contrast, the downing of two civilian Air Rhodesia planes by rebel troops during the guerrilla war that brought black rule to Zimbabwe was nothing but coldblooded. In 1978, foot soldiers of Joshua Nkomo's Patriotic Front Army fired Soviet SA-7 missiles at a Viscount airliner as it flew from Salisbury to Kariba, 175 miles to the northwest. Of the 56 aboard, 38 died in the crash. Then, after injured passengers crawled from the wreckage, the guerrillas arrived and again opened fire, killing ten of the survivors...
Whites in Zimbabwe still have not forgiven Nkomo for his elation over the massacre, nor for the subsequent rebel rocket attack on yet another Viscount in 1979, in which 59 passengers and crew died. His only regret, said Nkomo of that incident, was that the principal target of the attack, Rhodesian Defense Chief Peter Walls, was not aboard the flight...