Britain sent about 1,400 more troops to Iraq, the 2nd Battalion Light Infantry and the 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets, to supplement its force of 10,000. Another 1,200 may be sent too. A man died during a clash between two factions of Iraqi asylum-seekers and two dozen men using baseball bats, sticks, bricks and knives in the St Ann’s district of Nottingham. Mr Paul Evans, the commissioner of Boston city police department, was appointed by Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, as head of the Police Standards Unit, which monitors local forces. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told the press he was going to say, at a TUC dinner, ‘The idea of a left-wing Labour government as the alternative to a moderate and progressive one is the abiding delusion of 100 years of our party. We aren’t going to fall for it again.’ But when it came to it, he did not use those words. Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, rejected appeals for a referendum on the looming European Union constitution. Mr Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, said that plans had been hatched to evacuate tens of thousands of people from London to camps in the Home Counties in the event of a radiological, chemical or biological terrorist attack on London. Emergency services held an exercise at Bank station, postponed from 23 March because of the war against Iraq, simulating a chemical attack on a train. The Hutton inquiry into the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, heard evidence from Mr Richard Taylor, a special adviser to Mr Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, that a meeting had been held to discuss what to do if reporters came up with the name of Dr Kelly as the suspected source for a BBC report about the government dossier on Iraq; Mr Hoon was at that meeting.
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