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Slice of Life

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Why you can trust SCMP
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From the South China Morning Post this week in: 1955

Under the headings 'Maclean-Burgess case'; 'Macmillan unfolds 'painful story'' and 'No evidence Philby was 'Third Man'', the Post ran the following story:

The Foreign Secretary, Mr Harold Macmillan, said that Conservatives and Socialists shared the blame for the 'horrible crime of treachery' committed by Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

Opening a debate in the House of Commons on the two diplomats who defected from the Foreign Office to Russia four years ago, Mr Macmillan said: 'It can rarely have happened in our long Parliamentary history that the political head of a department should have had to unfold to the House of Commons so painful a story as that which it is our duty to consider today. Our foreign service feels this is a personal wound.' Mr Macmillan also said that no evidence had been found that Harold Philby, who had been named as the 'third man' by a Labour MP, was responsible for warning Burgess and Maclean.

Communism had exerted on some men 'a pull which was to prove much stronger than patriotism', said Mr Macmillan. The list of men who could 'commit the horrible crime of treachery' reached finally to some holding posts 'in these two cases, the subject of this debate, in the Foreign Office. Both the Opposition and the Government share responsibility. The main acts in the drama took place when the Opposition was in power.' He summed up the division of blame: that Burgess and Maclean defected while the Labour Party was in power, but that the Conservatives that succeeded to power 'are accused of having said too little and too late'.

Driving with faultless consistency, Robert Richie, a corporal in the Royal Air Force, brilliantly won the second Macao Grand Prix in his Austin-Healy 100. His time over the 60-lap Guia circuit was three hours, 55 minutes, 55.7 seconds and his average speed was 59.49 miles per hour.

More than 10,000 spectators watched the gruelling race as one car after another fell into trouble, including Macao favourite Lopes da Costa's Ferrari Mondial, which took the lead from the start and held onto it easily until the Governor's son-in-law was compelled to withdraw owing to a broken radiator.

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