Portrait of the Week – 23 October 2004

The United States asked for British forces to be sent from the south of Iraq around Basra to positions further north to cover for American troops required to attack Fallujah, where insurgents have been in control; the government decided to send soldiers of the Black Watch. They would come under American command but retain British rules of engagement. Abu Hamza al-Masri, the well-known hook-handed Muslim cleric, was taken to Belmarsh magistrates’ court to answer ten charges of soliciting or encouraging the murder of others, ‘namely a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith’. Mr Mike Tomlinson, a former chief inspector of schools, proposed in an official report that A-levels and GCSEs should be replaced over a 10-year period by a diploma; ‘teacher-led assessment should be the predominant mode of assessment’ in place of GCSEs. But Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, ‘GCSEs and A-levels will stay’.