Labour are forced to tone down party broadcast attacking the National Front
This week in 1977, the Labour Party was forced to tone down a party political broadcast attacking the National Front. The ten-minute broadcast on all television channels was only transmitted after a number of cuts were made in passages referring to the National Front and some of its past leaders.
The broadcast also provoked a political row over the way a number of interviews with National Front supporters were obtained.
The cuts in the broadcast were made on the insistence of legal advisers of the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority.
In other news, it was announced by Buckingham Palace that Princess Anne had named her baby Peter Mark Andrew, and that the Queen’s first grandchild would be known as Peter.
Master Phillips – the first royal child to be born a commoner in 500 years – was christened in the music room at Buckingham Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury a few weeks later.
Meanwhile, two British MPs accused the Soviet delegation at the European security conference in Belgrade of a “deliberate and disgraceful insult to the British Parliament and people.
Greville Janner and Tim Sainsbury, both campaigners for Soviet Jewry, expressed their anger after the chief Soviet delegate, Yuli Voronstov, called off a meeting.
They had brought with them a silver-covered Old Testament in Hebrew and
English which they passed on to the Soviet Jewish dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky, who was in prison in Moscow accused of treason.
The bible had been signed by 300 British MPs and by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
And finally, a US college basketball team died when their chartered DC-3 crashed soon after take off, killing all 29 people on board.
The plane, chartered by the University of Evansville basketball team, plunged into a wooded area in fog and rain from Dress Airport in Southwest Indiana.