Portrait of the Week – 28 June 2003

Mr Alastair Campbell, the director of communications at the Prime Minister’s office, agreed to give evidence about statements on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction before the televised Commons foreign affairs committee. Earlier Mr Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, had told the committee that the second dossier on the subject was commissioned by Mr Campbell and was a ‘horlicks’. Four policemen were injured in the second night of disturbances on the Caia Park estate of 12,500 at Wrexham, north Wales, after clashes between local people and Iraqi Kurdish refugees (asylum-seekers whose applications had been accepted). New heights were reached in the row over the nomination of Dr Jeffrey John, who has enjoyed a homosexual relationship for 27 years, although with no genital activity for a few years now, as the new suffragan Bishop of Reading. Eight diocesan bishops wrote to Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury in his support, nine having written to oppose him; Dr Williams read out a statement in which he said, ‘It would be deplorable if it were assumed that the existing approach has been abandoned by stealth.’