Why the Queen Mother braved years of blitz

By Tom Hayes

When the Royal Family take their place on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day on Monday, the Queen Mother will stand alone for one minute if front of the crowds.

It will be an opportunity for those gathered before her to pay tribute to the woman who bore so much during the war and shared, and was identified with, the nation's hour of trial.

At first the Queen Mother, then Queen Elizabeth, was the hardly known wife of a shy and nervous George VI, who had been crowned less than three years before after the unexpected abdication of his brother Edward VIII.

But as the war progressed the King and Queen became increasingly popular and, in a very real sense, an inspiration to the nation.

When invasion became a threat in 1940, some advisers wanted the Royal Family to flee to Canada. The Queen Mother put her foot down, saying "The children could not go without me, I could not possibly leave the King, and the King would never go". Buckingham Palace received the first of nine direct hits on 13 September, 1940, when other areas were already suffering. The Queen Mother famously remarked: "I am glad the Palace has been bombed - it makes me feel that I can look the East End in the face again".

From the bombed Palace she and the King family cemented a special relationship with the public. When they were forced out, they went to Windsor but spent much of the time touring Britain to lift morale.

After a royal visit one Blitz survivor is recorded as saying: "We suddenly felt that if the King was there everything was all right and the rest of England was behind us".

When VE Day dawned on 8 May, 1945, a massive crowd of cheering, flagwaving people surrounded the Palace. The King appeared with the Queen Mother, the then Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

They had to make eight appearances before the wildly happy crowds would let them go. (Evening Standard)

VE Day - Victory in Europe Day; May 8^th 1945

Q u e s t i o n s:

1. What is the theme of the story?

2. Identify the lead and comment on it.

3. Comment on the supporting material.

Assignment 9.

Read the two stories from the same newspaper and on the same topic. Compare the way of presenting material. Analyze the style of each story.

South Africa seeks to polish its diamond industry

By Susanne Daley

Johannesburg - On a recent morning Wendell Littler, 21, was staring through a magnifying glass judging his polishing work on a tiny diamond, just six-hundredths of a carat - worth barely more than $30.

«It is almost finished now,» he said, with a sigh. A week before, it had been considerably bigger and worth at least six times as much. But he had tapped it just a bit too hard against the polishing wheel and it had shuttered.

The minuscule stone he now appraised was all that could be salvaged.

Another misjudgment and he would be asked to leave the Harry Oppenheimer Diamond Training School, named for the mining magnate.

Even the first slip was not taken lightly. «They were shouting all over the place,» Mr.Littler said, glancing furtively down the row where his instructors were busy for the moment with other students.

Inside a building in central Johannesburg called the Diamond Center, which looks quite ordinary except for the men in suits with AK-47s outside, more than 40 students are bent over gleaming polishing wheels carefully, very carefully trying to buff 57 perfect facets onto their diamonds. There isn’t much talking.

While South Africa remains one of the world’s largest diamond producers, it has never had much of a hold on the lucrative industries that follow mining - appraising, cutting, polishing and jewelry-making. Those jobs have gone places where labor is skilled or cheap or both.

But South Africa is hungry for jobs and, with the burden of international sanctions lifted in the post-apartheid era, it would like to bring home some of the paychecks. The school, officially opened last month, is a piece of the strategy, financed by industry donations and aided by tax incentives.

More than half of the students are on scholarships aimed at bringing more nonwhites into the business. Apartheid laws allowed blacks into the industry in 1976 because cheaper labor was needed. But few were able to become full-fledged tradesmen working on high-quality stones for higher salaries.

«That’s not what we want here,» said Aubrey Hoskin, who oversees the school’s polishing instructors. «We want our guys to be the best. They want it too.»

It can take students as much as two weeks to finish their first stone. Some will finish fewer than a dozen by the end of the six-month course. But in the real world, speed counts. In some factories, a worker may be expected to polish up to 30 diamonds a day.

How to bolster South Africa’s cutting and polishing industry, which at its peak employed about 4,000 people but now employs 1,600 is a matter of some debate. The government has a commission investigating the issue.

Israel, New York and Belgium were diamond-cutting centers but have been in decline. To compete, they are cutting bigger diamonds and relying more on sophisticated technology. South Africa needs to follow suit, experts say. Union officials want to see De Beers Corporation sell more of its big stones here. But De Beers executives object, citing market forces. (International Herald Tribune, September 18, 1997)