Portrait of the Week – 8 March 2003

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech in Swansea: ‘In 1938 Chamberlain was a hero when he brought back the Munich agreement. And he did it for the best of motives. He had seen members of his precious family, people he loved, die in the carnage of World War I. He was a good man. But he was a good man who made the wrong decision.’ This followed a motion in the Commons on action against Iraq passed by a majority of 194, but opposed by 199 MPs – 121 of them Labour – who supported an amendment stating that the case for war was ‘as yet unproven’. London is to hold an exercise simulating a ‘catastrophic incident’, according to Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. Mr Blair and Mr Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach, went to Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, for talks with parties supporting the Belfast agreement of 1998; it had been hoped that the Irish Republican Army would announce the giving-up of hidden arms dumps on 17 March, but negotiations became bogged down, and the first consequence was the postponing of elections to the assembly by a month.